The Radio And Its Features

The radio is a technology that enables the transmission of signals through the modulation of electromagnetic waves, which do not require a physical means of transport, so they can spread both through air and space.

It is a form of telecommunication (distance communication) of a public nature, represented by the emission, transport and reception of voices, music and sound effects by means of electromagnetic waves that, without the use of cables and connections, travel from a centrally located source (station) to the listener (receiver).

The Radio It has 4 features fundamental that are:

1. Immediacy

It allows us to listen to the events that happen right at the moment in which they occur (an earthquake, the attack on the Twin Towers of New York, a blockage in an avenue or a news of transcendence for the society).

2. Personalization

It refers to the Radio creates a sense of belonging, for example, “my radio”. Despite being a massive means of communication, each person imagines in a different way the speaker who is speaking through the Radio as well as what that person is saying.

3. Multisensory

It refers to the fact that one can hear the Radio and be doing other simultaneous activities. As sound enters through the ear, one may be seeing other things and "hearing" the Radio.

4. Frequencies

Another feature of the Radio are its AM and FM frequencies, but what do they mean?

The width of a channel determines the amount of information that can be transmitted.

A station Modulated Amplitude (AM) it has 10 thousand cycles of bandwidth; that is to say, 10 kilohertz (KHz), and it is located in the frequency band that go from the range of 535 to 1700 KHz. It is divided into 107 channels, each of which has an amplitude of 10 KHz.

The Modulated Frequency (FM) it emits signals of higher frequency but of smaller waves than those of AM. The FM band ranges from 88 to 108 Megahertz (MHz) and broadcasts its signal to listeners with extraordinary quality mainly due to to the bandwidth it uses, since they are assigned by the SCT 200 Kilohertz instead of the 10 KHz that correspond to the AM stations. One Kilohertz equals one thousand cycles per second. Instead, one Megahertz equals one million cycles per second. The secret of the coverage of an FM station is to install the antenna on the highest ground, as its signal can be easily interfered with by trees, buildings and mountains.

Hertz is called the unit of measurement of the radio waves by Heinrich Hertz, who was the first scientist capable of generating, transmitting, receiving and measuring the waves of the radio. For this reason, his surname honors his person by using the word "hertz" to symbolize the electronic unit of cycles per second represented by the abbreviation "hz".