Faraday and the Electromagnetic Theory of Light

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is probably best known for his discovery of

electromagnetic induction, his contributions to electrical engineering and electrochemistry or
due to the fact that he was responsible for introducing the concept of field in physics to describe
electromagnetic interaction. But perhaps it is not so well known that he also made fundamental
contributions to the electromagnetic theory of light.

In 1845, just 170 years ago, Faraday discovered that a magnetic field influenced
polarized light – a phenomenon known as the magneto-optical effect or Faraday effect. To be
precise, he found that the plane of vibration of a beam of linearly polarized light incident on a
piece of glass rotated when a magnetic field was applied in the direction of propagation of the
beam. This was one of the first indications that electromagnetism and light were related. The
following year, in May 1846, Faraday published the article Thoughts on Ray Vibrations,
a prophetic publication in which he speculated that light could be a vibration of the electric and
magnetic lines of force.
 Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
Faraday’s case is not common in the history of physics: although his training was very
basic, the laws of electricity and magnetism are due much more to Faraday’s experimental
discoveries than to any other scientist. He discovered electromagnetic induction, which led to
the invention of the dynamo, the forerunner to the electric generator. He explained electrolysis
in terms of electrical forces and also introduced concepts such as field and lines of force, which
not only were fundamental to understanding electrical and magnetic interactions but also
formed the basis of further advances in physics.

Michael Faraday was born in South London to a humble family. The only basic formal
education he received was in reading, writing and arithmetic as a child. He left school when he
was thirteen and started working in a bookbinding shop. His passion for science was awakened
by the description of electricity he read in a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica he was
binding, after which he started experimenting in an improvised laboratory. Faraday was hired in
1813 as Humphry Davy’s laboratory assistant at the Royal Institution in London, where he was
elected a member in 1824 and where he worked until his death in 1867, first as Davy’s assistant,
then as his collaborator, and finally, after Davy’s death, as his succesor. Faraday made such an
impression on Davy that when the latter was asked about his greatest discovery, Davy
answered: “My greatest discovery was Michael Faraday”. In 1833 he became the first Fullerian
Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution. Faraday is also recognized as a great popularizer
of science. In 1826 Faraday established the Friday Evening Discourses at the Royal Institution,
which are a channel of communication between scientists and laymen. The following year he
launched the Christmas Lectures for young people -now broadcast on national television every
year-, a series whose objective is to present science to the general public. Faraday himself gave
many of these lectures. Both of them continue to this day.
 Michael Faraday delivering a Christmas Lecture at the Royal Institution in 1856 /
Faraday made his first discovery of electromagnetism in 1821. He repeated Oersted’s
experiment placing a small magnet around a current-carrying wire and verified that the force
exerted by the current on the magnet was circular. As he explained years later, the wire was
surrounded by an infinite series of circular concentric lines of force, which he termed the
magnetic field of the current. He took the work of Oersted and Ampère on the magnetic
properties of electrical currents as a starting point and in 1831 achieved an electrical current
from a changing magnetic field, a phenomenon known as electromagnetic induction. He found
that when an electrical current was passed through a coil, another very short current was
generated in a nearby coil. This discovery marked a decisive milestone in the progress not only
of science but also of society, and is used today to generate electricity on a large scale in power
stations. This phenomenon reveals something new about electric and magnetic fields. Unlike
electrostatic fields generated by electric charges at rest whose circulation along a closed path is
zero (a conservative field), the circulation of electric fields created by magnetic fields is along a
closed path other than zero. This circulation, which corresponds to the induced electromotive
force, is equal to the rate of change of the magnetic flux passing through a surface whose
boundary is a wire loop (Faraday’s law of induction). Faraday invented the first electric motor,
the first electrical transformer, the first electric generator and the first dynamo, so Faraday can
be called, without any doubt, the father of electrical engineering.
 Faraday abandoned the fluid theory to explain electricity and magnetism and
introduced the concepts of field and field lines, moving away from the mechanistic explanation
of natural phenomena like Newton’s actions-at-a-distance. Faraday’s introduction of the concept
of field into physics is perhaps his most important contribution and was described by Einstein as
the great change in physics because it provided electricity, magnetism and optics with a
common framework of physical theories. However, Faraday’s lines of force were not accepted
until several years later when James Clerk Maxwell entered the picture.

As noted at the beginning of this article, another and perhaps less known effect
discovered by Faraday was the influence of a magnetic field on polarized light, a phenomenon
known as the Faraday effect or magneto-optical effect. Faraday’s inquisitive mind was not
content to simply discover the relationship between electricity and magnetism. He also wanted
to determine whether magnetic fields had an effect on optical phenomena. He believed in the
unity of all the forces of nature, and in particular of light, electricity and magnetism.
On September 13, 1845 he found that the plane of polarization of linearly polarized light is
rotated when this light travels through a material to which a strong magnetic field is applied in
the direction of propagation of the light. Faraday wrote in paragraph #7504 of his Dairy:

“Today worked with lines of magnetic force, passing them across different bodies

(transpar ent in different directions) and at the same time passing a polarized ray of light through

them (…) there was an effect produced on the polarized ray, and thus magnetic force and light

were proved to have relation to each other”.

This was certainly the first clear indication that magnetic force and light were related to each
other and it also showed that light is related to electricity and magnetism. In relation to this
phenomenon Faraday also wrote in the same paragraph:
“This fact will most likely prove exceedingly fertile and of great value in the investigation of both

conditions of natural force”.

He was not wrong. This effect is one of the cornerstones of the electromagnetic theory of light.

Polarization rotation due to the Effect Faraday / Credits: Adapted from Wikipedia
In a Royal Institution’s Friday Evening Discourse delivered on April 1846, Faraday speculated
that light might be some form of disturbance propagating along the field lines. The truth is that
on this particular Friday it was Charles Wheatstone who was scheduled to give a talk on his
chronoscope. However, at the last minute, Wheatstone had an attack of stage fright and so
Faraday delivered Wheatstone’s talk. Since he finished ahead of time, he filled in the remaining
minutes by revealing his thoughts on the nature of light. Faraday’s discourse was published the
same year in the Philosophical Magazine under the title Thoughts on Ray-Vibrations. Faraday
even dared to question the existence of the luminiferous aether –a scientific heresy at that
time–, which was supposed to be the medium for light propagation as so elegantly Fresnel had
described in his wave theory of light. He proposed that the light could be not the result of aether
vibrations, but vibrations of the physical lines of force. Faraday tried to leave out the aether, but
he kept the vibrations. In an almost apologetic tone, Faraday finishes his paper stating:

“I think it likely that I have made many mistakes in the preceding pages, for even to

myself, my ideas on this point appear only as the shadow of a speculation”.

However, this idea of Faraday’s was received with considerable scepticism and rejected
by everyone until Maxwell’s article titled A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field was
published in 1865. In this paper, Maxwell not only describes his seminal electromagnetic theory
of light –one of the milestones commemorated in this International Year of Light 2015– but also
attributes the ideas which eventually formed the basis of his theory to Faraday’s thoughts on
ray vibrations. On page 466 of his paper, and with the modesty that always characterized
Maxwell, he refers to Faraday’s 1846 paper as follows:

“The conception of the propagation of transverse magnetic disturbances to the exclusion of

normal ones is distinctly set forth by Professor Faraday in his ‘Thoughts on Ray Vibrations’. The
electromagnetic theory of light, as proposed by him [Faraday], is the same in substance as that
which I have begun to develop in this paper, except that in 1846 there were no data to calculate
the velocity of propagation”.
 Dual Nature of Light

Light is a transverse, electromagnetic wave that can be seen by the typical human. The
wave nature of light was first illustrated through experiments on diffraction and
interference. Like all electromagnetic waves, light can travel through a vacuum. The
transverse nature of light can be demonstrated through polarization.
 In 1678, Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) published Traité de la Lumiere, where he
argued in favor of the wave nature of light. Huygens stated that an expanding sphere of
light behaves as if each point on the wave front were a new source of radiation of the
same frequency and phase.
 Thomas Young (1773–1829) and Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) disproved Newton's
corpuscular theory.

Sources

Light is produced by one of two methods…

 Incandescence is the emission of light from "hot" matter (T ≳ 800 K).

 Luminescence is the emission of light when excited electrons fall to lower energy levels
(in matter that may or may not be "hot").

Speed

Just notes so far. The speed of light in a vacuum is represented by the letter c from the
Latin celeritas — swiftness. Measurements of the speed of light.

In fact I have tried the experiment only at a short distance,

less than a mile, from which I have not been able to
ascertain with certainty whether the appearance of the
opposite light was instantaneous or not; but if not
instantaneous it is extraordinarily rapid….

Galileo Galilei, 1638

Rømer's idea was to use the transits of Jupiter's moon Io to determine the time. Not
local time, which was already possible, but a "universal" time that would be the same for all
observers on the Earth, Knowing the standard time would allow one to determine one's
longitude on the Earth — a handy thing to know when navigating the featureless oceans.
 Unfortunately, Io did not turn out to be a good clock. Rømer observed that times
between eclipses got shorter as earth approached Jupiter, and longer as earth moved
farther away. He hypothesized that this variation was due to the time it took for light to
travel the lesser or greater distance, and estimated that the time for light to travel the
diameter of the Earth's orbit, a distance of two astronomical units, was 22 minutes.

 The speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant in all reference frames.

 The speed of light in a vacuum is fixed at 299,792,458 m/s by the current definition of
the meter.
 The speed of light in a medium is always slower the speed of light in a vacuum.
 The speed of light depends upon the medium through which it travels.The speed of
anything with mass is always less than the speed of light in a vacuum.

other characteristics

The amplitude of a light wave is related to its intensity.

 Intensity is the absolute measure of a light wave's power density.

 Brightness is the relative intensity as perceived by the average human eye.

The frequency of a light wave is related to its color.

 Color is such a complex topic that it has its own section in this book.
 Monochromatic light is described by only one frequency.
o Laser light is effectively monochromatic.
o There are six simple, named colors in English (and many other languages) each
associated with a band of monochromatic light. In order of increasing frequency they
are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
o Light is sometimes also known as visible light to contrast it from "ultraviolet light"
and "infrared light"
o Other forms of electromagnetic radiation that are not visible to humans are
sometimes also known informally as "light"
 Polychromatic light is described by many different frequencies.
o Nearly every light source is polychromatic.

o White light is polychromatic.

A graph of relative intensity vs. frequency is called a spectrum (plural: spectra).
Although frequently associated with light, the term can be applied to any wave phenomena.
 A continuous spectrum is one in which every frequency is present within some range.
o Blackbody radiators emit a continuous spectrum.
 A discrete spectrum is one in which only a well defined set of isolated frequencies are
present.
(A discrete spectrum is a finite collection of monochromatic light waves.)
o The excited electrons in a gas emit a discrete spectrum.

The wavelength of a light wave is inversely proportional to its frequency.

 Light is often described by it's wavelength in a vacuum.

 Light ranges in wavelength from 400 nm on the violet end to 700 nm on the red end of
the visible spectrum.

Phase differences between light waves can produce visible interference effects.
(There are several sections in this book on interference phenomena and light.)
Comparison between Reflection and Refraction:

Reflection Refraction

Reflection is when light falls Refraction usually deforms

on any surface, and a part of the image, depending on the
Description
that light is sent back to the angle in which the image hits
same medium. another plane or surface.

It may also involve sound

Involves It only involves images
waves other than images.

The angle of incidence and The angle of incidence and

Similar the angle of reflection are the angle of refraction are
similar in reflection. not similar in refraction.

Applied rarely at some

Applied Applied in day-to-day activity
specific time.

Light travels to the same Light travels from one

Medium
medium medium to another medium

Found in Images / mirrors Lenses

Light properties, sound

Hair management, cosmetics,
Examples editing, anything involving
beauty arrangements, etc.
science.
 The Law of Refraction
When light travels from one medium to another, it generally bends, or refracts. The
law of refraction gives us a way of predicting the amount of bend. This law is more
complicated than that for reflection, but an understanding of refraction will be necessary for
our future discussion of lenses and their applications. The law of refraction is also known as
Snell's Law, named for Willobrord Snell, who discovered the law in 1621.

Snell's Law
Like with reflection, refraction also involves the angles that the incident ray and the
refracted ray make with the normal to the surface at the point of refraction. Unlike
reflection, refraction also depends on the media through which the light rays are travelling.
This dependence is made explicit in Snell's Law via refractive indices, numbers which are
constant for given media1.

Snell's Law is given in the following diagram.

As in reflection, we measure the angles from the normal to the surface, at the point
of contact. The constants n are the indices of refraction for the corresponding media.

Tables of refractive indices for many substances have been compiled.

 n for Light of Wavelength 600 nm
Substance Refractive Index, n
Air (1 atmosphere pressure, 0 degrees C) 1.00029
Water (20 degrees C) 1.33
Crown Glass 1.52
Flint Glass 1.66

Say, in our simple example above, that we shine a light of wavelength 600 nm from
water into air, so that it makes a 30o angle with the normal of the boundary. Suppose we
wish to find the angle x that the outgoing ray makes with the boundary. Then, Snell's Law
gives

1.33 sin 30o = 1.00029 sin x

x = 41o

Refraction certainly explains why fishing with a rod is a sport, while fishing with a
spear is not2.

A more complicated illustration of Snell's Law proves something that seems

intuitively correct, but is not obvious directly. If you stand behind a window made of
uniform glass, then you know by now that the images of the things on the other side of the
window have been refracted. Assuming that the air on both sides of your window have the
same refractive indices, we have the following situation:
We find that the incoming and outgoing light beams are actually parallel.

Rearranging Snell's Law, with i and r being the incident and refracted angles,

n1sin(i) = n2sin(r)
(n1/n2)sin(i) = sin(r)

a qualitative description of refraction becomes clear. When we are travelling from an

area of higher index to an area of lower index, the ratio n1/n2 is greater than one, so that the
angle r will be greater than the angle i; i.e. the refracted ray is bent away from the normal.
When light travels from an area of lower index to an area of higher index, the ratio is less
than one, and the refracted ray is smaller than the incident one; hence the incident ray is
bent toward the normal as it hits the boundary.
Of course, refraction can also occur in a non-rectangular object (indeed, the objects that we
are interested in, lenses, are not rectangular at all). The calculation of the normal direction
is harder under these circumstances, but the behaviour is still predicted by Snell's Law.

Calculating n

Given a transparent substance, we can always find its index of refraction by using a
setup like the example above. Surrounding the substance of unknown index n with a
material with a known index of refraction, we can find the unknown n by measuring angles
and applying Snell's Law.

However, calculating ns in this way, an obvious question arises. How did the first
index get calculated? We could always choose an arbitrary substance as a meterstick, and
calculate all other indices in terms of this base. However, indices of refraction arise in
Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic waves; that, in fact, is how they are defined. We
shall not delve into these equations here; instead we will note that n for air is very close to
1, and that we can therefore easily calcuate n for any other substance using our setup
above.

Total Internal Reflection

An interesting case of refraction can occur when light travels from a medium of
larger to smaller index. The light ray can actually bend so much that it never goes beyond
the boundary between the two media. This case of refraction is called total internal
reflection.

In the above diagram, imagine that we are trying to send a beam of light from a
region with refractive index n1 to a region with index n2 and that n2 < n1. If x1, x2 are the
angles made with the normal for the incident and refracted rays, then Snell's Law yields
 Since n2 < n1, we could potentially get an argument for the arcsin function that is
greater than 1; an invalid value. The critical angle is the first angle for which the incident ray
does not leave the first region, namely when the "refracted" angle is 90 o. Any incident angle
greater than the critical angle will consequently be reflected from the boundary instead of
being refracted. For concreteness, pretend that we are shining light from water to air. To
find the critical angle, we set x2 = 90o. Using Snell's Law, we see that any incident angle
greater than about 41o will not leave the water.
 The Law of Reflection

Light is known to behave in a very predictable manner. If a ray of light could be

observed approaching and reflecting off of a flat mirror, then the behavior of the light as it
reflects would follow a predictable law known as the law of reflection. The diagram below
illustrates the law of reflection.

In the diagram, the ray of light approaching the mirror is known as the incident
ray (labeled I in the diagram). The ray of light that leaves the mirror is known as
the reflected ray (labeled R in the diagram). At the point of incidence where the ray strikes
the mirror, a line can be drawn perpendicular to the surface of the mirror. This line is known
as a normal line (labeled N in the diagram). The normal line divides the angle between the
incident ray and the reflected ray into two equal angles. The angle between the incident ray
and the normal is known as the angle of incidence. The angle between the reflected ray and
the normal is known as the angle of reflection. (These two angles are labeled with the
Greek letter "theta" accompanied by a subscript; read as "theta-i" for angle of incidence and
"theta-r" for angle of reflection.) The law of reflection states that when a ray of light reflects
off a surface, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.

Reflection and the Locating of Images

It is common to observe this law at work in a Physics lab such as the one described
in the previous part of Lesson 1. To view an image of a pencil in a mirror, you must sight
along a line at the image location. As you sight at the image, light travels to your eye along
the path shown in the diagram below. The diagram shows that the light reflects off the
mirror in such a manner that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.
 It just so happens that the light that travels along the line of sight to your eye follows
the law of reflection. (The reason for this will be discussed later in Lesson 2). If you were to
sight along a line at a different location than the image location, it would be impossible for a
ray of light to come from the object, reflect off the mirror according to the law of reflection,
and subsequently travel to your eye. Only when you sight at the image, does light from the
object reflect off the mirror in accordance with the law of reflection and travel to your eye.
This truth is depicted in the diagram below.

For example, in Diagram A above, the eye is sighting along a line at a

position above the actual image location. For light from the object to reflect off the mirror
and travel to the eye, the light would have to reflect in such a way that the angle of
incidence is less than the angle of reflection. In Diagram B above, the eye is sighting along a
line at a position below the actual image location. In this case, for light from the object to
reflect off the mirror and travel to the eye, the light would have to reflect in such a way that
the angle of incidence is more than the angle of reflection. Neither of these cases would
follow the law of reflection. In fact, in each case, the image is not seen when sighting along
the indicated line of sight. It is because of the law of reflection that an eye must sight at the
image location in order to see the image of an object in a mirror.

Reflection of Light and Image Formation

Light always follows the law of reflection, whether the reflection occurs off a curved
surface or off a flat surface. The task of determining the direction in which an incident light
ray would reflect involves determining the normal to the surface at the point of incidence.
For a concave mirror, the normal at the point of incidence on the mirror surface is a line that
extends through the center of curvature. Once the normal is drawn the angle of
incidence can be measured and the reflected ray can be drawn with the same angle. This
process is illustrated with two separate incident rays in the diagram at the right.
Lesson 2 discussed the formation of images by plane mirrors. In Lesson 2, it was emphasized
the image location is the location where reflected light appears to diverge from. For plane
mirrors, virtual images are formed. Light does not actually pass through the virtual image
location; it only appears to an observer as though the light is emanating from the virtual
image location. In this lesson we will begin to see that concave mirrors are capable of
producing real images (as well as virtual images). When a real image is formed, it still
appears to an observer as though light is diverging from the real image location. Only in the
case of a real image, light is actually passing through the image location.

What is an Image? How is it Formed?

Suppose that a light bulb is placed in front of a concave mirror at a location
somewhere behind the center of curvature (C). The light bulb will emit light in a variety of
directions, some of which will strike the mirror. Each individual ray of light that strikes the
mirror will reflect according to the law of reflection. Upon reflecting, the light will converge
at a point. At the point where the light from the object converges, a replica, likeness or
reproduction of the actual object is created. This replica is known as the image. Once the
reflected light rays reach the image location, they begin to diverge. The point where all the
reflected light rays converge is known as the image point. Not only is it the point where light
rays converge, it is also the point where reflected light rays appear to an observer to be
diverging from. Regardless of the observer's location, the observer will see a ray of light
passing through the real image location. To view the image, the observer must line her sight
up with the image location in order to see the image via the reflected light ray. The diagram
below depicts several rays from the object reflecting from the mirror and converging at the
image location. The reflected light rays then begin to diverge, with each one being capable
of assisting an individual in viewing the image of the object.

If the light bulb is located at a different location, the same principles apply. The
image location is the location where reflected light appears to diverge from. By determining
the path that light from the bulb takes after reflecting from the mirror, the image location
can be identified. The diagram below depicts this concept.
 You might notice that while the same principle applies for determining the image
location, a different result is obtained. When the object is located beyond the center of
curvature (C), the image is located between the center of curvature (C) and the focal point
(F). On the other hand, when the object is located between the center of curvature (C) and
the focal point (F), the image is located beyond the center of curvature (C). Unlike plane
mirrors, the object distance is not necessarily equal to the image distance. The actual
relationship between object distance and image distance is dependent upon the location of
the object. These ideas will be discussed in more detail later in this lesson.
 LIGHT

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Princess Jenelle Magtanong

Rodelio Ferrer

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Bea Ann Legatuna

Benel Fabros

Angelo Soliven

Angeline Samantha Cariaga

Gianne Kate Gaspar

Jairus Barrid

Mae Joan Deregla

Mhier Justin Apanay

Maria Lourdes Mallari

Sheila May Santos

Vaughn Reizen Matamis

REFERENCES:

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/leading-figures/faraday-
electromagnetic-theory-light/

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-reflection-and-refraction

https://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m309-01a/chu/Fundamentals/snell.htm

https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refln/Lesson-1/The-Law-of-Reflection