Why should the two fields of light lie only in one plane each.

It seems to me that the combination of E and M ought to be in 3
diomensions not in a plane.
In other words they have a thinckness or extension and are not flat.

Wave packet sphere

Mitch

On 15 dic, 23:03, BURT wrote:
Why should the two fields of light lie only in one plane each.

It seems to me that the combination of E and M ought to be in 3
diomensions not in a plane.
In other words they have a thinckness or extension and are not flat.

Wave packet sphere

Mitch
Some theory:

E and B ( not M!!! ) are two vectors and by maxwell's equation if one
of the changes with time the other must also change.with Some basic
algebra you get the differential equation for waves for E and B. If
you take de scalar product for E and B you get zero ( always ) which
means they are perpendicular and hence define plane. If instead you
take the vector product you get Poynting's vector which defines the
propagation of the ElectroMagentic wave.

answer: the picture that you always see in textbook only applies to
linearly polarized EM waves,
so each vector always lies in the same planes. But you can
have for example circularly polarized light. which means the E vector
of the wave turns around the direction of propagation so it does a
helix. ( the same applies to B as it always perpendicualr to E ).
I you are interested search for polarization,jone's vectors and jone's
matrix which are used to described polarized light.

Hope it helped

On Dec 15, 5:03 pm, BURT wrote:
Why should the two fields of light lie only in one plane each.

One plane each?

On Dec 15, 4:03 pm, BURT wrote:
Why should the two fields of light lie only in one plane each.

It seems to me that the combination of E and M ought to be in 3
diomensions not in a plane.

E and B are vectors associated with a point in space. Two vectors with
a common origin (the point in space) span a plane. This isn't rocket
science.

In other words they have a thinckness or extension and are not flat.

Wave packet sphere

Mitch