I did one module of physics for my GCSE one year ago which taught me about transverse EM waves & the EM spectrum, but since then, I do not understand how a wave would move in 3D space. Can someone show me some animation or something? I can understand it in 2D space (ie on a graph) but not 3D. I also read somewhere that they do not oscilate in space, but in electromagnetic field strength and direction? Is this true?
Answer
Ell, I sympathise. You look at the graphs showing an oscillating electromagnetic wave and misread the transverse axes as spatial. So you think an electromagnetic wave is like the wave you can flick along a skipping rope. No it isn't.
The best way to think about it is that at each point in space where the wave is, there are two little arrows at right angles to each other and to the direction of motion of the wave. One arrow is the electric field, the other is the magnetic field. Suppose at some time the electric field arrow points to the right. As you watch, it gets shorter and shorter until it momentarily vanishes and then grows in the opposite direction to the left to the same length. Then it starts getting smaller again until it sloshes back to its original position. Meanwhile the other arrow, the magnetic field arrow at right angles, is sloshing upwards and downwards in a similar fashion.
Note that you are to imagine the arrows as NOT extending in space around the point - they really correspond to moment-by-moment meter-readings of the field strengths constituting the wave at exactly that point.
[Note this corresponds to a plane-polarised wave - I'm trying not to make it too complicated].
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