I’ve seen one multiple educational videos that draw light as two orthogonal waves traversing through space. What is that trying to represent?What exactly is going up and down?
Furthermore, why do people often make the analogy that light acts like a ripple in a pond?
In: Physics
Think of dropping a stone in a pond – you get waves of water moving outwards. These transmit energy from the source (the centre) outwards.
Light can be thought of as a very similar wave moving outwards from the light source and so transmitting energy away from the source. It is this energy we capture when that wave arrives at a solar panel.
Now water waves move up and down vertically in a gravitational field, which is why we call them gravity waves (we do, honest). Think of a gravitational field as being an area of space where objects with mass are pushed in some direction, specifically down. Light waves move up and down in an electric field, and also in a magnetic field. For slightly obscure reasons these fields exist at right angles to each other. Perhaps the best way is to think of electric fields (that push electrons around) and magnetic fields (that push magnetic materials around) are just two different ‘directions’ of a single electromagnetic field.
So water waves move through a gravitational field, and light which is an electromagnetic wave moves through an electromagnetic field.
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