system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
LI5: How do radio signals work?

Placeholder text for possible future edits.
gpt
Let's say you drop a rock in a pond. You'll notice a bunch of ripples, small waves, coming out from where the rock dropped.

Now, let's say you had a friend on the other side of the pond, and you wanted to talk to each other, but it was too far to yell. What you could do is make up a code using those ripples to communicate. Something like morse code for example. Maybe two ripples right next to each other is an A, and three ripples right next to each other is a B, etc. So long as the pond is still enough, you can communicate across the lake by using these waves.

Radio signals work the same way, except instead of water they use air, and instead of a rock to generate the waves, they use a wire. When they charge up that wire and discharge it, it gives off an electromagnetic pulse, like a sound, which sends these invisible waves through the air. 

Now, you may be thinking, there's an awful lot of people talking to each other using these waves. Radios, cordless phones, wifi networks, etc. The way they manage to do this is everyone uses a different frequency to communicate on. Imagine people are singing to communicate. If everyone sang at once it would be hard to figure out who's saying what, but if you got each person to sing a different note, it'd be simple. These radio carrier frequencies are like the notes of the musical scale.