How do radio waves travel

Hernus Hernus 11 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. Recall that EM waves do not require medium for propagation. The continuously changing electric field of an EM wave generates continuously changing magnetic field and vice versa.

This is a never ending phenomenon. So in a sense we understand them as particles traveling through space. I don't think we truly understand what a photon is, yet, though. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. The energy of the wave is transferred as oscillating electric and magnetic fields. Hence, radio-waves doesn't require a physical medium to travel. Physicpsycho Physicpsycho 1 1 silver badge 11 11 bronze badges. The fact that there's no medium is really important and, I would say, pretty non-intuitive.

The triad would be correct if the magnetic field in the figure matched that of the triad. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.

The distances to be traveled are so great that even light or radio waves take a while getting there. It takes around eight minutes for radio waves to travel from the Earth to the Sun, and four years to get from here to the nearest star.

How long does it take for transmissions to get between DS1 and Earth? How often is DS1 in communication with Earth? What are radio waves? The words "electromagnetic spectrum" are used to name a group of waves. Not any kind of waves, not acoustic, not mechanical waves but electromagnetic waves.

Simply speaking, their size. It is a name for a bunch of kids going to the same school and being roughly about the same age.

However, they are all different. The differ in their weight. Got the analogy? PART 2. Ok, now let us take a look at your question. I decided to give you two answers. One intuitive and not very precise, but still demonstrating the idea, and a second one, more precise and scientific. The first answer uses again an analogy: radio waves corresponding to a boy light waves corresponding to a mosquito the wall corresponding to rain The answer to your question is hidden in the comparison of the sizes of the above objects.

A boy can easily run when it is rainy. But a mosquito will never fly when it is rainy. Because the size of a mosquito is roughly the same as the size of a rain drop. If a mosquito entered into the rain, the first few drops would knock the mosquito down to the mud.