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Asked by ejrw to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 12 Mar 2012.
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Adam Stevens answered on 10 Mar 2012:
Well, we kinda can see it. Or at least we can see the effects of it. So you can see leaves rustling and trees bending and trampolines rolling past (if you live in Scotland).
But of course we can’t actually see the wind because the wind is just a movement of air, and we can’t (normally) see air. We can hear it because sound is /also/ just a movement of air, so wind is kind of one form of sound. In actually fact you usually only hear the effects of the wind, whistling past your ears or through bushes.
In fact, if you know what you’re doing you can see winds. Because wind patterns change the temperature of the air, if you look at them with a very sensitive infra-red camera (say from a satellite) you can make out wind systems.
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Leila Battison answered on 10 Mar 2012:
The reason we can hear any sound is because it makes sound waves, which are just tiny movements of the air that our ears are designed to pick up. Wind is a pretty massive movement of air, so we can’t help but hear it, and it sounds like a roaring because all the molecules of the air are moving so fast.
You can’t see it because wind is just the movement of air molecules – there’s nothing else in there for us to spot. You can see through the air normally because it is a gas, and there are very few atoms in any bit of space you are looking at (compared to a solid, which is opaque because of all the tightly packed atoms).
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Catherine Rix answered on 11 Mar 2012:
Wind is the movement of gas molecules in the air. Our ear drums are very sensitive and can detect the vibrations caused by the movement of these molecules but the molecules are too small for our eyes to see individually.
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Karen Masters answered on 12 Mar 2012:
That’s a really interesting question.
Both sound and light move around as waves – but sound is a physical pressure wave in the atmosphere. You might have heard the phrase “In Space no-one can hear you Scream” well that’s because there’s no atmosphere to transport the sound waves. So the wind moves the atmosphere around and therefore we can hear it.
Light on the other hand is an “electromagnetic wave”. It can move through a vaccum. Only things like electricity and moving charges can make light – so the wind doesn’t make any light, so we can’t see it.
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