What is meant by electromagnetic radiation?

            There are different waves of light and energy that move around us.

            They come in the form of heat in the atmosphere, or radiation from space, or in any other form. These energy waves are commonly known as electromagnetic radiation. They have electric, as well as magnetic characteristics.

            The scientific definition given to this by experts goes as follows – the energy that is propagated through free space or a material medium in the form of electromagnetic radiation.

            Other than visible light, electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, ultraviolet rays X-rays, and gamma rays. They are classified on the basis of their frequencies or wave-lengths. The fact that the electromagnetic radiations are related to electromagnetism was put forward by a few scientists in the past. The existence of electromagnetic waves was first predicted by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. In his electromagnetic theory that he put forth in 1864, he said that light is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves.

           A few years later, German physicist Heinrich Hertz applied Maxwell’s theories to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves.