The biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships. This includes their interactions with the lithosphere (the rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle), hydrosphere (all surface water), and atmosphere (the envelope of gases surrounding the planet).

A compound is a substance containing two or more different chemical elements bound together by a chemical bond. In covalent compounds, electrons are shared between atoms. In ionic compounds, one atom borrows an electron from another atom resulting in two ions (electrically charged atoms) of opposite polarities that then become bonded electrostatically.

The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) but is informally known as a yellow dwarf star. Composed of 73% hydrogen and 25% helium, the hot plasma that makes up the Sun reaches 9,900°F (5,505°C) at the surface. It formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago and makes up 99.86% of the mass in the solar system.

A vibrating object produces a sound wave that travels outwardly from the object through a medium (any liquid or solid matter). The vibration disturbs the particles in the surrounding medium, those particles disturb the particules next to them, and so on, as the sound propagates away from the vibration.