Hello im new here and got a question.

Im trying to picture electromagnetic waves, I have learned a lot in my time but still don’t get what exactly they are as text books make up many different examples.

Before I imagined them as waves of particles but now think of them differently, like sound waves through air but then they would have to travel through a medium (maybe ether!?) or am I completely off?

Im not sure what to think, also would like to add I do have a fair amount of knowledge of physics but I tend to make up my own theories of things or can’t picture something which doesn't help me much.

:confused:

The shape of an electric wave depends on the source emitting it. A point charge emits spherically outgoing waves, that oscillate at every point at every instant according to equations of the form

A(t) = A₀ cos( wt - cx )

Unfortunately it is quite hard to explain in words what happens. You can fix a location in space (fix x coordinate) and watch what happens with the amplitude A(t) as a function of time, or you can fix a time t and watch what happens as a function of position. The real behaviour is a combination of both.

Concerning a medium: electromagnetic waves do not require a medium to travel in (don't be deceived by aether-theories, these have been proven to be not needed to explain EM wave phenomena).

Bye!

Crisp

I tend to picture them kind of as an x-y-z graph, with the electric field in the x-z plane, the magnetic field in the y-z plane, and the wave travelling in the z direction. It's important to keep in mind that it is fields which are oscillating, not particles.