Question

Suppose you hear music being played from a trumpet that is across the room from you. Compressions and rarefaction from the sound wave reach your car, and you interpret these vibrations as sound. Were the air particles that are vibrating near your ear carried across the room by the sound wave? How do you know?

Answer 1

No; As with all waves, the disturbance travels, not the material itself. Individual air molecules do not move across the room with the sound wave. Instead each molecule vibrates in place, and the vibrations are transferred from one particles to the next.