The electromagnetic nature of light

[Vanadium 50]

There is no wiggle room. Sin waves.

Pun intended?

 

[HomogenousCow]

Jeff it sounds like you need a good textbook and some mathematical foundations to really satisfy your curiosity. Your issue regarding whether or not electromagnetic waves are "sinusoidal" stems from a lack of mathematical knowledge, the matter itself is really quite trivial; the sinusoidal solutions of the wave equation are essentially the basic building blocks of general solutions in Cartesian coordinates, you could choose some other coordinate system and you would get another set of generally non-sinusoidal functions.

 

[davenn]

I do not know that I have ever seen what I would call a
"sinusoidal" waveform or anything close to sinusoidal in a natural signal.
The "waveform" of natural signals, in my limited experience, is random,
looking more like grass than like a sine wave.

an emphatic NO

because your experience is limited that "grass" noise is just the hiss of zillions of mixed
signals that are too weak to resolve ... just like a "snowy" screen on an old analog TV.

clear signals that are above the noise floor are easily distinguishable

The only reason I ask about broad-spectrum, natural signals is to clarify
the answer to my first question of whether we can observe the waveform
of individual RF photons, and are they sinusoidal.

AGAIN ! ... as you have been told a number of times, forget about photons
You are still trying to mix classical and quantum "views" of EM ... it isn't going to work for you.

and what is YOUR definition of broad spectrum ?
D

 

[anorlunda]

The OP's question has been more than adequately answered.

Thread closed.