Why do people say light, radio, microwave, Infrared and gamma waves so on are electromagnetic waves?
What are electromagnetic waves? And why is light or radio so on electromagnetic? Why do light waves or radio waves have no mass and cannot be measured?
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Electromagnetic waves are a solution of the Maxwell equations. Since the electric field and magnetic field can create each other if you solve the equations for vacuum and a specific geometry where the magnetic and electric filed components are perpendicular, you get a wave equation. The solution is a wave where the electric and magnetic filess are always perpendicular and they travel with the speed of light.
Later Herts showed that these electromagnetic waves did exist and visible light is one range of frequencies.
Now a wave is just how energy moves in a medium. When it comes to the EM field what happens is that lets say a charge accelerates. You got a changing electric field creating a changing magnetic field which creates a changing electric filed and so on. Its a wave. Why doesn’t it have mass? A wave doesn’t have mass, you could say that a wave has mass if it consists of particles like a wave on a string but you wouldn’t really say its the wave that has mass.
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