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Light is called an 'electromagnetic wave' for historical reasons* in the following sense: It turned out that the effects of visible light and other radiation can be calculated using Maxwell's equations, which are also used to model the behaviour of electrically charged particles. This was an instant of a successful unification and it hasn't been dismissed since.
Light is an electromagnetic field disturbance that propagates. Because light does not carry charge particles, it is not bent by electric or magnetic forces if some abstruse quantum effects are ignored. The field disturbances simply superimpose themselves on whatever electric and magnetic fields are present in the space being traveled.
May 13, 2023 · Published: May 13, 2023. Sharing is Caring. According to Huygens, an expanding sphere of light behaves as if each point on the wave front were a new source of radiation with the same frequency and phase as the preceding one. Because electromagnetic waves have fluctuating electric and magnetic fields, they are called electromagnetic waves.
However when light hits a transparent object at a angle it will be refracted (except at 90 degrees). This is a property of a wave. Therefore light is seen as electric waves and magnetic waves oscillating at right angles from each other. Light is always either a wave or a particle but never both at the same time.
Electromagnetic waves bring energy into a system by virtue of their electric and magnetic fields. These fields can exert forces and move charges in the system and, thus, do work on them. However, there is energy in an electromagnetic wave itself, whether it is absorbed or not. Once created, the fields carry energy away from a source.
The frequency of an electromagnetic wave is same as the frequency of vibrating charges that produce it. Hertz's waves had a frequency of about \(10^6\) cycles per second. These waves are now called radio waves. The visible light is also an electromagnetic wave but with considerably higher frequency than the radio waves.
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Why is light an electromagnetic wave?
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Light, as a kind of EM wave carries energy, not matter. As such, it is produced by a source which when it is very hot becomes incandescent (emits light). Light is part of EM spectrum, i.e. unlike mechanical waves, it possesses both an electric and magnetic component (E and H) which are perpendicular to each other.
