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A common misconception (wrong idea) regarding waves is that a wave involves the movement of matter from the source to other parts of a medium. In the case of a sound wave traveling through air, a student might believe that particles of air move at high speeds from the speaker to the hearer. But don't be fooled! Waves involve the transport of energy, not the transport of matter. When a sound wave travels through air, particles of air simply undergo a back-and-forth vibratory cycle about a fixed position. The air particles do not actually move from the speaker to the observer; they simply vibrate. Their vibrations force their nearest neighbors to vibrate which forces their nearest neighbors to vibrate which forces their nearest neighbors to vibrate.
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