Hi all: Why is it that we have a dozen or so different electromagnetic wave types and yet every one of them can be used for analog and digital communication?
Thanks!
In: Physics
We don’t really have a dozen or so different electromagnetic wave types. Well we do, but only “on paper” if that makes sense. All electromagnetic waves are actually the same thing, except on different parts of one frequency spectrum. They’re just put into different “classes” because for practical reasons. The light coming out your screen right now is fundamentally the same thing as a wi-fi signal or an x-ray, except they obviously interact with the environment in different ways depending on where they are on that spectrum so they’re separated into different types for classification.
As for the communications thing, that’s beyond electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is just one medium out of many that you can use to transmit a signal. Analog or digital has nothing to do with the medium. You can use the vibrations of air molecules to transmit analog or digital signals. You can wave your arms to transmit analog or digital signals if you want. A clever arrangement of baked beans on the ground can encode analog or digital signals. What separates analog from digital is how the data is structured, not how it’s transmitted.
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