Science Forums 2

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by logy

the question asked was how come EM waves are not affected by EM force fields, and yes, EM waves don't have a constant charge, but they do have an alternating electical/magnetic field and as a result some of the time they do exist as a static electrical field or as a magnetic field, so why are they not affected by by a magnet? the answer IMHO lies in the fact that they are only fields and the interaction between two charged particles relies on they mass, distance and charge according to the formula
force = (KxQ1xQ2)/R^2
acceleration = (force x distance)/mass

where K is the electric constant
Q1 and Q2 are the charge of the particles in columbs
R is the distance in meters between the 2 particles

if there where massless partiles with a constant charge, the math will not work as the acceleration is inversly proportional to the mass and therefore any force would accelerate such a particle to infinite speed (division by zero since the mass is zero) the natural conclusion is that massless particles with a 'charge' cannot be acclerated. my argument is that massless particles cannot have their speed affected by force fields due to the division by zero problem.

in my understanding, it is the fact that force will accelerate massive particles, but has no effect on EM waves as they are an alrernating static/magnetic force fields with no mass. the concept of charge, is simply saying that a massive particle has a constant EM force field. if i where to create a system that has mass and has an alternating electrical/magnetic field it will be affected by a magnet, accelerating, decelerating or changing direction depending on it's configuration.

am i wrong?

You are far beyond my level of expertise, the original question was is light affected by a magnetic field, it is not, i honest do not know why except that photons are not charged. If indeed massless particles were charged I would expect them to be affected but as far as I know there are no massless charged particles. Your take is interesting but will require someone who is above me on the food chain.