- #1
barnaby
- 17
- 0
Another thing that I've never really understood...
As fas as I'm concerned, waves need a medium to travel through, but electromagnetic waves seem not to need one at all. I just can't visualise them as oscillations in anything.
It sort of helps if I visualise EM waves as photons, because then they're particles in their own right... but that gives rise to a whole lot of physics I simply am not equipped mathematically or conceptually to tackle yet (I started AS Physics this year).
Is it necessary to go into quantum mechanics to understand electromagnetic waves?
EDIT: I'm reading this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html#c3 at the moment, but a lot of it is slightly over my head.
Another question that I forgot to ask when I initially posted this thread was basically the same, but for actual electrical/magnetic attraction between magnets and coils of wire and whatnot...
As fas as I'm concerned, waves need a medium to travel through, but electromagnetic waves seem not to need one at all. I just can't visualise them as oscillations in anything.
It sort of helps if I visualise EM waves as photons, because then they're particles in their own right... but that gives rise to a whole lot of physics I simply am not equipped mathematically or conceptually to tackle yet (I started AS Physics this year).
Is it necessary to go into quantum mechanics to understand electromagnetic waves?
EDIT: I'm reading this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html#c3 at the moment, but a lot of it is slightly over my head.
Another question that I forgot to ask when I initially posted this thread was basically the same, but for actual electrical/magnetic attraction between magnets and coils of wire and whatnot...
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