SUNWAY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

AUSTRALIAN MATRICULATION
PHYSICS
UNIT 3B
PARTICLES, WAVES AND QUANTA

Week 20

Electromagnetic Waves

Electromagnetic (EM) Waves.

• Electromagnetic waves are produced when electrons are accelerated and the
energy given off due to this acceleration is transferred through space.

The Production of EM Waves

• Every electron has an electric field around it. This electric field can be detected by
another charged particle.
• The vibration of an electron produces a changing electric field with respect to
time. This change is also detected by other charged particles.
• This changing electric field produces a magnetic field around the electron.
• When electrons accelerate, they produce a time varying magnetic field which
in turn produces a time varying electric field. The process of accelerating electrons
produces EM waves.
• Both these time varying B field and E field progress through space away from
the source of vibration at a speed of 3.00 × 108 ms-1.

• The “detector” picks up an EM wave by experiencing changes in E – field and the

B – field. For example, a TV antenna is used to detect changing E – field and B –
field to intercept incoming TV signals.

The Nature of EM Waves

• EM waves are transverse waves.

• They progress away from the source at a rate of 3.00 × 108 ms-1.
• The time varying B field is always perpendicular to the time varying E field.
• EM waves do not require a medium to propagate in.

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 SUNWAY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
AUSTRALIAN MATRICULATION
PHYSICS
UNIT 3B

The Production of EM Waves in Space

• The surfaces of stars have a mixture of helium and hydrogen gases.

• Constant reactions provide extra energy to the electrons inside the atoms of the
gases, causing these charged particles to accelerate. The rate of oscillations determines
what region the EM wave correspond to.
• This produces both a time varying B – field and an E – field that is perpendicular
to each other that travel through space to reach an observer.
• At the observer, for example, the human eye, the charged particles in the eye
respond by oscillating at the frequency equal to the vibrating source.

The Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) Spectra

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 SUNWAY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
AUSTRALIAN MATRICULATION
PHYSICS
UNIT 3B

• The diagram above shows the components of the EMR spectrum.

• The components differ only due to their difference in frequency (or wavelength)
since they all have the same speed of propagation. The higher frequency components
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have a shorter wavelength since frequency α wavelength (since speed of propagation is
constant).
• The higher the frequency, the higher the number of oscillations made at the source
as well as at the detector. Therefore, the higher frequency components carry more energy
compared to the lower energy components of the EMR spectrum.

The Nature of Light (an example of an EM Wave)

• Theories on the properties of light had begun when Newton postulated his
“corpuscles” theory or tiny little particles theory.
• In this theory, light is considered made up of a stream of tiny particles. Using
his theory, Newton could explain why light traveled in straight lines and reflection as
well as the refraction of light. However, it failed to explain certain behaviour of light,
for example diffraction.
• Christian Huygens also during the same time proposed his wavelet theory.
Light was made up of tiny wavelets that acted like new point sources. With this
theory he could explain almost all behaviour of light including diffraction.
• Young’s famous double slit experiment that showed light could experience
interference by the evidence of bright fringes and dark fringes also tended to skew
the opinion that light was a wave.
• However, around the late 19th century, Heinrich Hertz discovered something
interesting. When conducting his famous photoelectric experiment, he observed that
light with very high frequency was able to eject electrons from the surface of a
material (a conductor). This phenomenon cannot be explained by the wave theory of
light. Please read pages 219 - 221 from text.
• Planck then came up with a solution. Light is now to be treated as quantized
bundles or “tiny packets” of energy. This brought about the treatment of light as a
wave – particle dual. The wave – particle nature of light tells us that light can behave
as a stream of particles or as waves, depending on the situation it experiences.
• Light energy is not continuous (as in the wave model), but rather it is
delivered in tiny, discrete bundles called photons or quanta.
• He suggested that the energy carried by each photon is proportional to the
hc
frequency of the light. He derived the equation E = hf = where E = energy of a
λ
photon ,J; h = 6.63 × 10-34 (Plank’s constant) ,f = frequency of photon, Hz; c = speed of
light = 3.00 × 108 ms-1, λ = wavelength of the photon, m.
• Planck’s photon model suggests that the energy carried by a beam of light
consists of a number of discrete packets of light energy (the photons).
• This means that the total energy carried by the beam, Etotal will be E total = Nhf
where the number of photons in the beam is N.

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 SUNWAY UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
AUSTRALIAN MATRICULATION
PHYSICS
UNIT 3B
• Furthermore, Planck suggested that a single photon can only interact with one
electron in another material at a time.
• If a photon is absorbed by a particle like an electron, it will be completely
absorbed, transferring all of its energy at once. Partial absorption is not possible.
• Photons also travel at the speed of light.

Examples:
1. A 100 W light bulb produces yellow – green light of wavelength 500 nm.
Determine the number of photons released from the globe every minute. [1.51 × 1022]

2. The frequency of a green light is 5.60 × 1014 Hz.

a. What is the wavelength of this light? [536 nm]
b. Calculate the energy of a photon of this green light in joules and
electron-volts (eV). [3.71 × 10-19 J, 2.32 eV]

3. An ultraviolet source produces radiation with a wavelength of 1.5 × 10-8 m.

a. What is the frequency of this radiation? [2.00 × 1016 Hz]
b. Calculate the energy of a photon of this light in joules and electron-
volts (eV). [1.33 × 10-17 J, 82.9 eV]