So I understand that light is energy and can be modelled as a wave, where different frequencies are perceived as different colours. All good. But I don’t really understand that. I can understand sound because you can view it as changes in air pressure – and that can explain how sound travels and how it is perceived. But I can’t find anything similar intuitive explanation of how light works – how it is physically manifested, how it travels, and how it can be understood in terms of a wave. Any explanation I can find assumes that you already understand the light as waves concept.
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You are asking questions that have troubled the greatest minds for centuries. And we do not have all the answers. We can say that light is a manifestation of electromagnetism in the form of a wave. The force it can apply to a target charged particle is electromagnetic in nature. It basically accelerates charges that are hit by the wave. If you want to go deeper than this, you could start by trying to understand how an antenna works and maybe look at how our eyes detect this kind of wave. There is a good video on yt for the latter phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjrFe7JHY1o
As far as intuitive explanations go, there is not much to go on. Maxwell’s equations surely do not qualify. But this is most of the knowledge we have.
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