EM Waves: Understanding their Composition and Mass [SOLVED]

Thread starter Farn
Start date Jul 1, 2003
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Electromagnetic (EM) waves consist of oscillating electric and magnetic fields that propagate through space, exhibiting both wave and particle properties, known as wave-particle duality. EM waves do not have rest mass, meaning they cannot accelerate to the speed of light if they did, but they can interact with mass due to the curvature of spacetime. The energy of a photon is shared between the electric and magnetic fields, which sustain each other through their changes. While electrons create electric and magnetic fields, EM waves can propagate without the presence of electrons, as these fields exist independently in a vacuum. Understanding EM waves involves recognizing the interplay between these fields and their relationship to photons, which are the quanta of the electromagnetic field.

Jul 8, 2003

Ace-of-Spades

Originally posted by bdkeenan00
Not all of the photons have to absorbed and remitted. Some could pass in between the spaces between atoms and get to your eyes in a strait line, while some others are absorbed and remitted in a random direction(which could explain why the light seems to expand outward in all directions). And when you think about how many photons there are coming from source it's easy to see how so many can get away without being absorbed.

Thanks, but if that is true, it does away with the reason of why this line of thought started being discussed here anyway.
The original question was:

Why do photons travel slower when traveling through an optically dense medium?

Ivan Seeking's suggestion was that they constantly get absorbed, and new ones are released, making the light beam travel slower.

I was simply arguing this.