Historical burdens on physics 119 Electromagnetic transverse waves Subject: Right at the beginning of the chapter about waves students learn the definition of the concepts longitudinal and transverse wave: “For a transverse wave the displacement of the individual sections of the wave carrier is perpendicular to the direction of propagation. For a longitudinal wave they oscillate back and forth in the direction of propagation.” Later, when the subject is electrodynamics, they learn: “Light can be polarized. Thus, it is a transverse wave whose E and B fields oscillate perpendicularly to the direction of propagation.“ Usually, the distribution of the electric and the magnetic field strength in space is illustrated by a figure like that of our Fig. 1. x y E z H Fig. 1. “Snapshot” of the electric and the magnetic field strength of a sine wave Deficiencies: According to the definition which our students learn, in a transverse wave the wave carrier moves perpendicularly to the direction of propagation. If we take this definition literally, then an electromagnetic wave is not a transverse wave, since nothing is moving in such a wave. Of course, one might argue that the statement is not meant literally, but just in the way we speak normally when we say that the temperature or the stock-market price “is moving”. However, the “movement” seems to be taken too seriously by the students. We suspect that part of the fault is the picture of Fig. 1 which is never missing in the text books: A snapshot of the movement of the vector tip of the electric and the magnetic field strength. You can easily find out that something is not understood when performing a physics examination at the University. Ask for the field line picture within the room where the examination takes place for the radio waves coming from a nearby radio station, the students usually reply by sketching the picture of Fig. 1. When you point out that this is not a field line picture, the students are usually perplexed. Apparently, they interpret the image of Fig. 1 in the sense of our citation: a movement. What makes the interpretation of the figure somewhat difficult is the fact that first a spacial coordinate system is drawn, and then two other physical quantities E and B are represented. We know the procedure from mechanics, where we often draw force vectors in a scene that represents an object in normal space. In our case, there is the additional difficulty that the values of E and B change from point to point, and that their functional dependency is shown for only one space coordinate. The suggestion of an oscillation in the sense of a movement is rather strong. Fig. 2. Field line picture of a periodic electromagnetic wave Origin: A somewhat unreflected take-over of the definition of the concepts longitudinal and transverse wave from mechanics to electrodynamics. There may exist a historical reason why the oscillation metaphor is so widely used in electrodynamics. In former times students learned: “Light is a transverse ether wave.” And that was meant in the sense of the mechanical definition of the concept transverse wave. Disposal: Explain the field strength distribution in a (periodic) wave with a drawing like that in Fig. 2, instead that of figure 1. Friedrich Herrmann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology