Today I was sitting in a friends' car on the way to school when he says to me, "Take a look at this, every time I switch the radio from FM to AM, it will only play in the right front speaker but when in FM, it goes back to normal!" I replied "Lucky for me, today I will be able to find out why that is."
Kayla Sortor, a student studying Communications at The University of Maryland, was able to clarify a more definite understanding about the differences between AM and FM radio. In order for the interview to begin, we couldn't move any further without answering what everyone is probably wondering right now, "what does AM and FM stand for?"
Amplitude, Frequency, kilohertz and megahertz... okay, what?
Simply stated in "AM,FM Radio Waves and Sounds," AM radio works by changing the amplitude of the carrier wave and FM radio works by changing the frequency of the carrier wave. Kilohertz or in other words, thousands of cycles per second of electromagnetic energy ranges from 535 to 1705kHz which is none other as Kayla stated, "its just a fancy way of saying there are over 5,000 different AM radio stations on only 117 different frequencies." Unlike kilohertz, megahertz ranges from 88 to 108MHz, or in other words, millions of cycles per second.
Evidence shows that FM radio stations rule the radio world. On Kayla's blog, Kcsorter, you can see a graph depicting the grand scheme of things proving FM is widely favored over AM radio. As a blogger myself; I've blogged about radio, specifically satellite radio, but never have I used it and probably will not because why pay if I can listen to FM radio for free. As for AM, free or not, I wouldn't listen to it either way.
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