Question

State Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic wave related to light. Write down four characteristics of electromagnetic waves.

Answer 1

According to Maxwell, light waves are associated with changing electric and magnetic fields.

Changing electric field produces a time and space varying magnetic field and a changing magnetic field produces a time and space varying electric field. The changing electric and magnetic fields result in the propagation of electromagnetic waves (or light waves) even in vacuum.

Characteristics of electromagnetic waves :

1)EM waves always travel at speed of light = $3\times {10}^{8}m/s$

2)EM waves can travel through vacuum.

3)EM waves consists of mutually perpendicular time varying electric and magnetic fields.

4)EM waves do have characteristics like wavelength , amplitude and frequency.