Questions on sound waves/air blowing/wind

[Ron Koval]

This may sound elementary but, if sound waves are compressed andrarefacted molecules of air, then how is it that soundwaves are not wind, orair blowing. <snip>
 
Have you ever seen a stretched slinky, shaken?  It is easy to get standing waves that hold the waveform, but if you just do a quick shake, you can see the wave move from one end to the other, then come back.  Obviously, the metal nearest the hand didn't actually move all the way over there and then come back.  Likewise in air, sound isn't so much air moving THROUGH space, it is air pushing and pulling, and being pushed and pulled.
 
Same with the pebble in the water - the water moves up and down in a radial pattern that we see as motion from the middle out.  Yet the water, aside from the up and down and a slight back and forth doesn't move from the middle out.  Put a little surfboard on there and THEN you get real lateral motion pushed by the waveform.
 
Ron Koval
Chicagoland
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