I want this extremely simplified, beginning from the step where the metal is acquired and shaped.
In: Technology
Aye aye captain 😊
So the electrons have a long long cloth called electric field around them
When they move at constant velocity they get one more called magnetic field….Around them
Now antenna is an roller coaster to electrons…
When they get into that…
They are bound to get stripped off the electric field cloth and magnetic field cloth….
But these meany electrons have unlimited supply of both of these long cloths….
So em waves are just those wavy long electromagnetic disturbances in the electric and magnetic fields that move….
Once the roller coaster aka antenna comes to rest ….. Means it’s not excited at the input….
Electrons take a rest and grab their scissor and cut those both electric and magnetic fields cloths from them…
These cut cloths intertwined in each other propagate at the speed of light to new destinations where they can excited electrons at other places and make them move when they encounter their new hosts…
EDIT: I only now reread your post. You want this to begin when the metal is shaped? I’m not sure what you would gain from that, as the metal is kinda irrelevant.
———— Original explanation
It’s actually not too difficult. Antennas behave like rotating bar magnets, switching North and South all the time, but really fast.
However, the magnetic field has a limited speed (the speed of light), so the “update” that you just rotated the bar magnet takes time to be experienced by the area around the antenna. By the time some area finally experiences your rotation, you already switched it again.
If you have something that travels AND changes direction regularly, well that’s called a wave.
Nothing physically leaves the antenna.
While not strictly magnetic, hopefully this will get the point across: Imagine a strong magnet inside of a plastic pipe, and another small magnet on the outside of the pipe. When you move the magnet on the inside, you move the magnet on the outside as well because the magnetic fields interact. Now, if you shake the magnet on the inside, the magnet on the outside will also shake – this is because the magnetic field is moving in an oscillation; a wave.
The electrons in a wire (the antenna) function similarly to the magnet in the pipe. The electrons in another antenna function like the magnet on the outside of the pipe, but *much* more sensitive and *much* longer-ranged.
Every charged particle in the universe is pushing/pulling on every other charged particle in the universe, all the time. Most of them are too far away to matter, of course. The force between particles depends on (among other things) the distance between them.
If you take a charged particle like an electron and make it wiggle, the force it is putting on the other charged particles changes along with that wiggle, since you are changing the distance between them a tiny bit.
Metals tend to have some electrons that are poorly bound to their parent atoms, so it isn’t to hard to make them wiggle with an oscillating voltage.
So that’s what you do. Mine, purify, and shape the metal into an antenna. Apply a rapidly changing voltage to that antenna and make some of its electrons wiggle. Which makes other electrons wiggle if they aren’t too far away.
In other words, it emanates what we call an “electromagnetic wave”, also known as “radio”.
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