In sound waves it’s the disturbance in matter that causes sound but how do electromagnetic waves work in vaccum. Help me understand how can energy oscillate?
In: 1
There’s not really an eli5 answer for this, since it’s about fundamental physics and these are always unintuitive, abstract and complicated. I’ll try my best to make it as easy to understand as possible but it’s still gonna be weird.
Our best model of reality for this particular question is called quantum field theory (QFT in short). In this model, every particle can be described by a field: There’s an electron field, a neutrino field and so on. There’s also a photon field. A field is just a fancy way of saying every point in space tells us something about the thing the field is for. For ease of understanding, you can imagine every field like a blanket. When something travels under the blanket, the blanket deforms. This is what we describe when we are talking about waves. So what’s oscillating for an electromagnetic wave is the photon field.
Well energy doesn’t oscillate. You have the EM field it fills all space. You need energy to excite the filed. The electric and magnetic components of the EM filed can excite each other in just the right way to allow waves to travel. You got some energy and that energy moves through the EM filed. The energy excites a point and then the next and so on but you know it gradually reaches its maximum then shrinks like a wave. The EM filed allows that energy to be transmitted but it only works because the electric and magnetic components can create each other. But thas no coincidence since Special Relativity we know that the electric and magnetic fileds are actually one filed the EM filed. One point excites the next and so on. Thats how any wave works.
Latest Answers