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What exactly is electromagnetic radiation? Other than the maths involved I'm not able to understand it at an intuitive level, can somebody please explain what it is?

Qmechanic
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Steve
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    Have you checked books and googled about it? There are enough definitions and reading stuff. Tell us which part confuses or disturbs you most. – SchrodingersCat Nov 11 '15 at 05:45
  • The books just state that it's basically the combination of a changing electric field and magnetic field – Steve Nov 11 '15 at 05:47
  • Yeah that's correct. Now tell us what is in this definition that you fail to understand? And add that part along with the previous comment to your question. It will look better. – SchrodingersCat Nov 11 '15 at 05:51
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    Why is energy released when a charge is accelerated – Steve Nov 11 '15 at 06:05
  • Can you say a bit about your background? What I'm getting at is that you seem to be asking for a description of something best thought of in the language of somewhat abstract mathematics in terms of everyday things. This doesn't really happen here, just as it doesn't happen in many parts of physics. The tools of physics are careful experiment and mathematical language to organize the description of the results and, if you're lucky, make some predictions. That's all we mere physicists can do. – Selene Routley Nov 11 '15 at 10:58
  • For why an accelerated charge radiates, this is one of the best "intuitive" explanations around. Basically an acceleration is a transition between two steady-state, nonradiating field configurations. It imparts a "shock" to the field lines, warping or kinking them in the neighborhood of the accelerating charge. The kink in the fieldlines propagates outwards at $c$, heeding the universal signalling speed limit of special relativity. – Selene Routley Nov 11 '15 at 11:04

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I think we can think of this as a wave although a bit different from water waves or sound waves.. I hope you agree that wave has energy .afterall by propagating waves energy is transferred..when we think of waves in a medium we can plot the displacement of different points in space and that's how wave propagates. Now in this case (em radiation) the amplitude of electric and magnetic fields are itself oscillating and creating this wave and the energy associated with it is transferred... and for why accelerated charge radiates I would suggest you to have a look at this http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/RadiationPulseFromAnAcceleratedPointCharge/..the same idea though.

kau
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