Chapter 5:

LIGHT AS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE

A Project
Presented to the Faculty of
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
BAGUIO CITY NATIONAL SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL
Purok 12, Irisan, Baguio City

In partial fulfillment of the requirements in

PHYSICS II

Submitted by:
Jessa Perez

Edgar P. Soriano, P
The study of electricity and magnetism were artfully united in John
Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. This module explores the
experimental connection between electricity and magnetism, beginning
with the work of Oersted, Ampere, and Faraday. The module gives an
overview of the electromagnetic nature of light and its properties, as
predicted by Maxwell’s mathematical model.

Key Concepts

In the mid-1800s, scientists including Andre Ampere and Michael

Faraday noted a connection between electricity and magnetism and
carried out a series of experiments that showed how they interact.

James Clerk Maxwell built on the work of Faraday and developed a

single set of equations defining both electricity and magnetism,
unifying the concepts into one theory of electromagnetism.

We now know that the electromagnetic spectrum is made up of a series

of waves of varying wavelength and visible light is just one small
portion of this spectrum

Electromagnetic waves or EM waves are waves that are created as a

result of vibrations between an electric field and a magnetic field.
In other words, EM waves are composed of oscillating magnetic and
electric fields.

Electromagnetic waves are formed when an electric field comes in

contact with a magnetic field. They are hence known as
‘electromagnetic’ waves. The electric field and magnetic field of an
electromagnetic wave are perpendicular (at right angles) to each
other. They are also perpendicular to the direction of the EM wave.

EM waves travel with a constant velocity of 3.00 x 108 ms-1 in vacuum.

They are deflected neither by the electric field, nor by the magnetic
field. However, they are capable of showing interference or
diffraction. An electromagnetic wave can travel through anything - be
it air, a solid material or vacuum. It does not need a medium to
propagate or travel from one place to another. Mechanical waves (like
sound waves or water waves), on the other hand, need a medium to
travel. EM waves are 'transverse' waves. This means that they are
measured by their amplitude (height) and wavelength (distance between
the highest/lowest points of two consecutive waves).

The highest point of a wave is known as 'crest', whereas the lowest

point is known as 'trough'. Electromagnetic waves can be split into a
range of frequencies. This is known as the electromagnetic spectrum.
Examples of EM waves are radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, X-
rays, gamma rays, etc.

Law of Reflection

The law of reflection governs the reflection of light-rays off smooth

conducting surfaces, such as polished metal or metal-coated glass
mirrors.

Consider a light-ray incident on a plane mirror, as shown in Fig. 56.

The law of reflection states that the incident ray, the reflected ray,
and the normal to the surface of the mirror all lie in the same plane.
Furthermore, the angle of reflection $r$ is equal to the angle of
incidence $i$. Both angles are measured with respect to the normal to
the mirror.

The law of reflection also holds for non-plane mirrors, provided that
the normal at any point on the mirror is understood to be the outward
pointing normal to the local tangent plane of the mirror at that
point. For rough surfaces, the law of reflection remains valid. It
predicts that rays incident at slightly different points on the
surface are reflected in completely different directions, because the
normal to a rough surface varies in direction very strongly from point
to point on the surface. This type of reflection is called diffuse
reflection, and is what enables us to see non-shiny objects.

The Law of Refraction

When light travels from one medium to another, it generally bends, or

refracts. The law of refraction gives us a way of predicting the
amount of bend. This law is more complicated than that for reflection,
but an understanding of refraction will be necessary for our future
discussion of lenses and their applications. The law of refraction is
also known as Snell's Law, named for Willobrord Snell, who discovered
the law in 1621.

Snell's Law

Like with reflection, refraction also involves the angles that the
incident ray and the refracted ray make with the normal to the surface
at the point of refraction. Unlike reflection, refraction also depends
on the media through which the light rays are travelling. This
dependence is made explicit in Snell's Law via refractive indices,
numbers which are constant for given media1.

Snell's Law is given in the following diagram.

As in reflection, we measure the angles from the normal to the

surface, at the point of contact. The constants n are the indices of
refraction for the corresponding media.

Tables of refractive indices for many substances have been compiled.

Say, in our simple example above, that we shine a light of wavelength
600 nm from water into air, so that it makes a 30o angle with the
normal of the boundary. Suppose we wish to find the angle x that the
outgoing ray makes with the bowundary. Then, Snell's Law gives

Refraction certainly explains why fishing with a rod is a sport, while

fishing with a spear is not2.

A more complicated illustration of Snell's Law proves something that

seems intuitively correct, but is not obvious directly. If you stand
behind a window made of uniform glass, then you know by now that the
images of the things on the other side of the window have been
refracted. Assuming that the air on both sides of your window have the
same refractive indices, we have the following situation:
We find that the incoming and outgoing light beams are actually
parallel.

Rearranging Snell's Law, with i and r being the incident and refracted
angles a qualitative description of refraction becomes clear. When we
are travelling from an area of higher index to an area of lower index,
the ratio n1/n2 is greater than one, so that the angle r will be
greater than the angle i; i.e. the refracted ray is bent away from the
normal. When light travels from an area of lower index to an area of
higher index, the ratio is less than one, and the refracted ray is
smaller than the incident one; hence the incident ray is bent toward
the normal as it hits the boundary.

Of course, refraction can also occur in a non-rectangular object

(indeed, the objects that we are interested in, lenses, are not
rectangular at all). The calculation of the normal direction is harder
under these circumstances, but the behaviour is still predicted by
Snell's Law.

Calculating n

Given a transparent substance, we can always find its index of

refraction by using a setup like the example above. Surrounding the
substance of unknown index n with a material with a known index of
refraction, we can find the unknown n by measuring angles and applying
Snell's Law.

However, calculating ns in this way, an obvious question arises. How

did the first index get calculated? We could always choose an
arbitrary substance as a meterstick, and calculate all other indices
in terms of this base. However, indices of refraction arise in
Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic waves; that, in fact, is how
they are defined. We shall not delve into these equations here;
instead we will note that n for air is very close to 1, and that we
can therefore easily calcuate n for any other substance using our
setup above.

a qualitative description of refraction becomes clear. When we are

travelling from an area of higher index to an area of lower index, the
ratio n1/n2 is greater than one, so that the angle r will be greater
than the angle i; i.e. the refracted ray is bent away from the normal.
When light travels from an area of lower index to an area of higher
index, the ratio is less than one, and the refracted ray is smaller
than the incident one; hence the incident ray is bent toward the
normal as it hits the boundary.

Two Point Source Interference

Wave interference is a phenomenon that occurs when two waves meet

while traveling along the same medium. The interference of waves
causes the medium to take on a shape that results from the net effect
of the two individual waves upon the particles of the medium. Wave
interference can be constructive or destructive in nature.
Constructive interference occurs at any location along the medium
where the two interfering waves have a displacement in the same
direction. For example, if at a given instant in time and location
along the medium, the crest of one wave meets the crest of a second
wave, they will interfere in such a manner as to produce a "super-
crest." Similarly, the interference of a trough and a trough interfere
constructively to produce a "super-trough." Destructive interference
occurs at any location along the medium where the two interfering
waves have a displacement in the opposite direction. For example, the
interference of a crest with a trough is an example of destructive
interference. Destructive interference has the tendency to decrease
the resulting amount of displacement of the medium.

Malus' law

the law stating that the intensity of a beam of plane-polarized light

after passing through a rotatable polarizer varies as the square of
the cosine of the angle through which the polarizer is rotated from
the position that gives maximum intensity.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the only known way to

generate polarized light was with a calcite crystal. In 1808, using a
calcite crystal, Malus discovered that natural incident light became
polarized when it wasreflected by a glass surface, and that the light
reflected close to an angle of incidence of 57° could be extinguished
when viewed through the crystal. He then proposed that natural light
consisted of the s- and p-polarizations, which were perpendicular to
each other.

Since the intensity of the reflected light varied from a maximum to a

minimum as the crystal was rotated, Malus proposed that the amplitude
of the reflected beammust be A = A0 cosθ. However, in order to obtain
the intensity, Malus squared the amplitude relation so that the
intensity equation I(θ) of the reflected polarized light was

where I0 = A02. this equation is known as Malus’s Law. A normalized

plot of Malus’s Law is shown below.

Thin-film interference is a natural phenomenon in which light waves

reflected by the upper and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere
with one another, either enhancing or reducing the reflected light.
When the thickness of the film is an odd multiple of one quarter-
wavelength of the light on it, the reflected waves from both surfaces
interfere to cancel each other. Since the wave cannot be reflected, it
is completely transmitted instead. When the thickness is a multiple of
a half-wavelength of the light, the two reflected waves reinforce each
other, increasing the reflection and reducing the transmission. Thus
when white light, which consists of a range of wavelengths, is
incident on the film, certain wavelengths (colors) are intensified
while others are attenuated. Thin-film interference explains the
multiple colors seen in light reflected from soap bubbles and oil
films on water. It is also the mechanism behind the action of
antireflection coatings used on glasses and camera lenses.

The true thickness of the film depends on both its refractive index
and on the angle of incidence of the light. The speed of light is
slower in a higher-index medium, thus a film is manufactured in
proportion to the wavelength as it passes through the film. At a
normal angle of incidence, the thickness will typically be a quarter
or half multiple of the center wavelength, but at an oblique angle of
incidence, the thickness will be equal to the cosine of the angle at
the quarter or half-wavelength positions, which accounts for the
changing colors as the viewing angle changes. (For any certain
thickness, the color will shift from a shorter to a longer wavelength
as the angle changes from normal to oblique.) This
constructive/destructive interference produces narrow
reflection/transmission bandwidths, so the observed colors are rarely
separate wavelengths, such as produced by a diffraction grating or
prism, but a mixture of various wavelengths absent of others in the
spectrum. Therefore, the colors observed are rarely those of the
rainbow, but browns, golds, turquoises, teals, bright blues, purples,
and magentas. Studying the light reflected or transmitted by a thin
film can reveal information about the thickness of the film or the
effective refractive index of the film medium. Thin films have many
commercial applications including anti-reflection coatings, mirrors,
and optical filters.

Single slit diffraction

Light is a transverse electromagnetic wave. In many situations, the

wavelengths of the light being studied are very small compared to the
dimensions of the equipment used to study the light. Under these
conditions we can make an approximation called geometrical optics or
ray optics. Consider the wavelength scale of light waves.
Wavelengths in the middle of the visible band are on the order of 500
nm. So a laser beam with a diameter of 1 mm has a diameter of 2000
wavelengths. Individual atoms in a solid are separated by distance on
the order of 0.1 nm. So, as far as visible light is concerned, matter
is quasi-continuous.

If the wavelengths of the light become comparable to the dimensions of

the equipment, then we study optical phenomena using the classical
theory of radiation, or wave optics. Wave optics contains all of ray
optics, but the mathematical treatment is much more involved.

Diffraction is the tendency of a wave emitted from a finite source or

passing through a finite aperture to spread out as it propagates.
Diffraction results from the interference of an infinite number of
waves emitted by a continuous distribution of source points in two or
three dimensions. Huygens' principle lets us treat wave propagation
by considering every point on a wave front to be a secondary source of
spherical wavelets. These wavelets propagate outward with the
characteristic speed of the wave. The wavelets emitted by all points
on the wave front interfere with each other to produce the traveling
wave. Huygens' principle also holds for electromagnetic waves. When
studying the propagation of light, we can replace any wave front by a
collection of sources distributed uniformly over the wave front,
radiating in phase.

When light passes through a small opening, comparable in size to the

wavelength λ of the light, in an otherwise opaque obstacle, the wave
front on the other side of the opening resembles the wave front shown
on the right.
Summative test ( 2points each)

1. A natural phenomenon in which light waves reflected by the upper

and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere with one another, either
enhancing or reducing the reflected light.

a. Thin-film interference b. Single slit

c. Double slit

2. The tendency of a wave emitted from a finite source or passing

through a finite aperture to spread out as it propagates.

a. Diffraction b. Attraction c. Action

3. The law stating that the intensity of a beam of plane-polarized

light after passing through a rotatable polarizer varies as the square
of the cosine of the angle through which the polarizer is rotated from
the position that gives maximum intensity.

a. Columb law b. Malus law c. Boyles

law

4. Gives us a way of predicting the amount of bend.

a. Law of refraction b. Snell law c. Malus law

5. A phenomenon that occurs when two waves meet while traveling along
the same medium.

a. Wave interference b. Square interference c.

Round interference

6. Occurs at any location along the medium where the two interfering
waves have a displacement in the same direction.

a. Wave interference b. Constructive interference

c. Round interference