What are Electromagnetic Radiation Waves?

Electromagnetic radiation is basically a type of energy, and it’s a type of energy that has both electric and magnetic wavelike components that oscillate perpendicular to both each other and to the direction the wave is traveling. It’s electrically charged particles that cause these electromagnetic waves, and these electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light.

Now the speed of light in a vacuum is approximately 3 times 10 to the 8th meters over seconds, so it’s really, really fast. Now, we can abbreviate electromagnetic as E-M, so that’s how we have it abbreviated here. Electromagnetic radiation passes through different media, slows down and is refracted, or bent, depending on the medium it passes into.

It passes through different media, (media is the plural form of medium) so the radiation is going to behave differently depending on what substance it is, sometimes it’s going to slow down and be refracted, or bent, it just really depends. Now, frequency and energy increase when the wavelength decreases.

They have a relationship here, but it’s an opposite relationship, so when frequency and energy increase then the wavelength is going to decrease. Now the energy of an electromagnetic wave is found by the equation E equals h times f. E stands for energy, h is Planck’s constant, and then f is the frequency in oscillations per second, or Hertz.

Wavelength isn’t included in here, but if you look at this principle right here you notice that as frequency increases the wavelength decreases—that’s because it has to—when the frequency is higher, (when something is occurring more) then the wavelength has to be shorter in order for that frequency to increase.

Now we see here that when frequency and energy both increase then the wavelength decreases, so frequency and energy here are related, they have a direct relationship. When energy goes up, frequency must also go up in order to keep this equation equal; and it works also if frequency goes up then energy must also go up. That’s a look at electromagnetic radiation waves.