The solution before revision #17949 of , by Arman. This is not the current version.

Statement

12.1.3. The figure illustrates the electric field of a plane sinusoidal wave at time . The arrow indicates the direction of wave propagation. How does the electric field intensity depend on the coordinate and time ?

For problem $12.1.3$

Solution

For a plane sinusoidal wave, the general equation of the electromagnetic wave is given by:

where , and are constants.

From the condition of the problem we know that:

Using eq(1) we get:

By comparing the phases we obtain that:

As the wave travels in the positive direction:

Setting the phase()to a constant value allows us to derive the phase velocity():

So we get the constant :

Plugging all the constants into the eq(1) gives us:

Answer