1. Sound is produced by vibration and needs a medium like air, water or other materials to travel through. It propagates as longitudinal waves of alternating high and low pressure regions called compressions and rarefactions.
2. When an object vibrates, it disturbs the nearby particles in the medium which then disturb farther particles, transmitting the sound wave. The particles themselves do not move forward but pass on the vibration.
3. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum as it needs particles to vibrate and transmit the sound. The human ear detects sound waves and the brain interprets these as different pitches and volumes of sound.