In your senior science studies, you may have learned about Hertz and his experiments with what we now recognise as radio waves. Through a series of experiments, he was able to demonstrate that the mystery radiation he was creating with the sparks from an induction coil behaved not only as a wave, by demonstrating that it showed the wave behaviours of reflection, diffraction, refraction and interference, but also that it was a transverse wave, demonstrated by the fact it could be polarised, just like Maxwell’s predicted electromagnetic radiation.
Many of Hertz’s experiments relied on his being able to use the reflection and interference properties of the mystery waves to create standing waves. Continue reading
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