To gain any understanding of EM radiation you need to understand something about electric fields.  To understand electric fields we need to quickly review a basic rule concerning static electricity that we mentioned in our discussion about lightning.


The rule is illustrated above. 
Now imagine, as shown below, placing a + charge at three different positions (a, b, & c) around another center charge.

Each of the charges is going to be repelled by the center charge.  The charge at (a) will be pushed to the left with a fairly strong force (because it is closest to the center charge).  The charge at (c) is further from the center and will be pushed to the upper right with a weak force.  Charge (b) will pushed to the right with medium strength force.  These various forces are shown on the next figure.

With just a little thought you can see that if you were to place + charges at other positions you would eventually end up with a pattern as shown below.

This is the pattern of the electric field vectors or arrows around a center + charge.  The arrows tell you the direction and strength of the force that would be exerted on a second + charge placed anywhere is the figure.  The electric field illustrated here is known as a static field because the center charge is not moving. We will use similar electric field arrows to understand the behavior of electromagnetic radiation.

We imagine turning on a source of EM radiation and then a short time later we take a snapshot.  During this time the EM radiation has propagated off to the right.  If you could see the radiation you would see a wavy pattern of electric and magnetic field arrows.  We'll ignore the magnetic field lines.  The E field lines sometimes point up, sometimes down.  The pattern of electric field arrows repeats itself. 

Note the + charge near the right side of the picture.  At the time this picture was taken the electric field arrow at the position of the + charge indicates that the radiation is exerting a strong upward force on the charge.

Textbooks often represent EM radiation with a wavy line like shown above.  The first snapshot figure above shows us what this wavy line really represents.

The wavy line just connects the tips of a bunch of electric field arrows.
Now we take another snapshot a short time later.  The wavy pattern has moved to the right.

The EM radiation now exerts a relatively weak downward force on the + charge.

And finally one more snapshot.

The + charge is now being pushed upward again.  A movie of the + charge, rather than just a series of snapshots, would show the charge bobbing up and down much like a swimmer in the ocean would do as waves passed by.

The wavy pattern used to depict EM radiation can be described spatially in terms of its wavelength, the distance between identical points on the pattern.  By spatially we mean you look at different parts of the radiation at one particular time.

Or you can describe the radiation temporally using the frequency of oscillation (number of up and down cycles completed by an oscillating charge per second).  By temporally we mean you at one particular point for a period of time.
One way of producing EM radiation is to move an electrical charge up and down.



 You add energy when you cause an electrical charge to move up and down and create the EM radiation (top).
In the middle figure, the EM radiation then travels out to the right (it could be through empty space or through something like the atmosphere). 

Once the EM radiation encounters an electrical charge at another location (bottom right), the energy reappears as the radiation causes the charge to move.  Energy has been transported from left to right.
EM radiation is created when you cause a charge to move up and down. If you move a charge up and down slowly (upper left in the figure above) you would produce long wavelength radiation that would propagate out to the right at the speed of light.  If you move the charge up and down more rapidly you produce short wavelength radiation that propagates at the same speed.

Once the EM radiation encounters the charges at the right side of the figure above the EM radiation causes those charges to oscillate up and down.  In the case of the long wavelength radiation the charge at right oscillates slowly.  This is low frequency and low energy motion.  The short wavelength causes the charge at right to oscillate more rapidly - high frequency and high energy.

The characteristics long wavelength - low frequency - low energy go together. So do short wavelength - high frequency - high energy.  Note that the two different types of radiation both propagate at the same speed.



This is really just a partial list of some of the different types of EM radiation.  In the top list, shortwave length and high energy forms of EM radiation are on the left (gamma rays and X-rays for example).  Microwaves and radiowaves are longer wavelength, lower energy forms of EM radiation.

We will mostly be concerned with just ultraviolet light (UV), visible light (VIS), and infrared light (IR).  Note the micrometer (millionths of a meter) units used for wavelength.  The visible portion of the spectrum falls between 0.4 and 0.7 micrometers (UV and IR light are both invisible).  All of the vivid colors shown above are just EM radiation with slightly different wavelengths.  WHen you see all of these colors mixed together, you see white light.


1.
 Unless an object is very cold (0 K) it will emit EM radiation.  All the people, the furniture, the walls and the floor in the classroom are emitting EM radiation.  Often this radiation will be invisible so that we can't see it and weak enough that we can't feel it.  Both the amount and kind (wavelength) of the emitted radiation depend on the object's temperature.

2.
 The second rule allows you to determine the amount of EM radiation (radiant energy) an object will emit.  Don't worry about the units, you can think of this as amount, or rate, or intensity.  Don't worry about σ either, it is just a constant.  The amount depends on temperature to the fourth power.  If the temperature of an object doubles the amount of energy emitted will increase by a factor of 2 to the 4th power (that's 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16).  A hot object just doesn't emit a little more energy than a cold object it emits a lot more energy than a cold object.  This is illustrated in the following figure:

3.
 The third rule tells you something about the kind of radiation emitted by an object.  We will see that objects usually emit radiation at many different wavelengths.  There is one wavelength however at which the object emits more energy than at any other wavelength.  This is called lambda max (lambda is the greek character used to represent wavelength) and is called the wavelength of maximum emission.  The third rule allows you to calculate "lambda max."  This is illustrated below:

The graph below also helps to illustrate the Stefan-Boltzmann law and Wien's law, particularly the meaning of lambda max.

Notice first that both and warm and the cold objects emit radiation over a range of wavelengths.  In some respects this is like quiz grades.  Not everyone in the room gets the same score; there's usually a very wide range of scores.  Objects do emit more of one particular wavelength than any other wavelength. This is lambda max. 

The area under the warm object curve is much bigger than the area under the cold object curve.  The area under the curve is a measure of the total radiant energy emitted by the object.  This illustrates the fact that the warmer object emits a lot more radiant energy than the colder object.

Lambda max has shifted toward shorter wavelengths for the warmer object.  This is Wien's law in action.  The warmer object is emitting a lot of short wavelength radiation that the colder object doesn't emit.