When you do this, the radio waves will hit the ionosphere, bounce back down to earth, and bounce back up again. The basic building block of radio communications is a radio wave. 1) Electricity flowing into the transmitter antenna makes electrons vibrate up and down it, producing radio waves. Last, you can also send radio waves straight up into the sky, which ends up bouncing off of the earth’s ionosphere, which is an electrically charged part of the atmosphere. The speed of radio waves is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. These fields travel in waves perpendicular to each other and can be classified based on their wavelength, which is the distance between the peaks of two waves.

Both AM and FM radios use radio waves to transmit programs on radio stations. 3) When the waves arrive at the receiver antenna, they make electrons vibrate inside it. EM or electromagnetic radiation is made up of a magnetic field and an electric field.

The size of radio waves varies and depends on the type of wave that gets generated. 2) The radio waves travel through the air at the speed of light. Radio waves work as a form of electromagnetic radiation. Radio waves travel throughout space at frequencies between 10 kHz and 100GHz per second.

Artwork: How a transmitter sends radio waves to a receiver. Like waves on a pond, a radio wave is a series of repeating peaks and valleys. The type of EM radiation … They are a mixture of magnetism and electricity that moves at the speed of light with a defined length and frequency. The speed is much faster than the 1,125 feet (340 meters) which sound moves through the air. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, as do all electromagnetic waves. According to the University of Southern California, radios work by encoding information on radio waves then broadcasting the radio wave with the encoded information onto a particular frequency.