What is the purpose of the Black Boxes NCAA Officials wear during games?

[eyezen]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

Perhaps one of our esteemed members knows something about radio waves and how they are generated and can tell us at what speed they travel. I think that they are sound waves and thus cannot travel faster than the speed of sound.

Put simply radio waves and light waves are both forms electromagnetic radiation that differ only in frequency. They both travel at "the speed of light" which Juggles correctly stated is less than "c" in an atmosphere.

Now frequency becomes important when the waves travels through a medium (again in simple terms a radio wave will slow down going through a wall but a light wave is completely stopped) but in this scenario is unimportant.

Sound waves are a different animal, they are compressions of the air around us and when those differences hit our eardrums we "hear" those differences. Hence why sound doesn't propagate in space.