- #71
Drakkith
Mentor
- 22,908
- 7,259
I feel any answer other than "the electric and magnetic fields" is more philosophical than scientific currently.
Yes indeed - I didn't mention or elaborate on that as I didn't want to step on someone's toes.DaleSpam said:OK, so that is an historically correct "when did you stop beating your wife" question.
A similar "difficulty" would be raised by the question "if the light source is an atom that will emit the light, how did the atom get there before the first emission of the light?".Studiot said:[..] So if this medium is an electric or magnetic or electromagnetic field for a light source, how did the medium get there before the first emission of the light?
That's a very different model - can you illustrate that with a water or sound wave? Or do you know an article describing that model?Alternatively we can suggest that the wave somehow takes its medium along with it or creates its own medium as it goes along.
That's a very different model - can you illustrate that with a water or sound wave? Or do you know an article describing that model?
I feel any answer other than "the electric and magnetic fields" is more philosophical than scientific currently.
FredericGos said:First of all the field doesn't travel. It's just there, everywhere, including the vacuum. In reality the field is made up of quantized harmonic oscilators.
Forces have directions, and as you can see in post #68, it seems that originally (and technically), fields were just the neighbourhoods where those forces were felt. However, later the term field strength (and sometimes simply "field") was used as a measure for the strength of forces that can be felt in the field - which includes directionality.Swetasuria said:Fields can have directions, right? If they are "just there, everywhere", then how come fields are vector qantities?