33-5 ENERGY TRANSPORT AND THE POYNTING VECTOR 897 PART 4 33-5 Energy Transport and the Poynting

Vector All sunbathers know that an electromagnetic wave can transport energy and deliver it to a body on which the wave falls.The rate of energy transport per un it area in such a wave is described by a vector , called the Poynting vector after physicist John Henry Poynting (1852 1914), who first discussed its properties. This vector is defined as (Poynting vector). (33-19) Its magnitude S is related to the rate at which energy is transported by a wave across a unit area at any instant (inst): (33-20) From this we can see that the SI unit for is the watt per square meter (W/m2). S : S energy/time area inst power area inst . S: 1 0 E: B: S: The direction of the Poynting vector of an electromagnetic wave at any point giv es the wave s direction of travel and the direction of energy transport at that point . S: Because and are perpendicular to each other in an electromagnetic wave, the magnitude of is EB.Then the magnitude of is (33-21) in which S, E, and B are instantaneous values. The magnitudes E and B are so closely coupled to each other that we need to deal with only one of them; we choose E, largely because most instruments for detecting electromagnetic waves deal with the electric component of the wave rather than the magnetic component. Using B E/c from Eq. 33-5, we can rewrite Eq. 33-21 in terms of just the electric component as (instantaneous energy flow rate). (33-22) By substituting E Em sin(kx vt) into Eq. 33-22, we could obtain an equation for the energy transport rate as a function of time. More useful in pra ctice, however, is the average energy transported over time; for that, we need to find the time-averaged value of S, written Savg and also called the intensity I of the wave.Thus from Eq. 33-20, the intensity I is (33-23) From Eq. 33-22, we find (33-24) Over a full cycle, the average value of sin2 u, for any angular variable u, is ( see Fig. 31-17). In addition, we define a new quantity Erms, the root-mean-square value of the electric field, as Erms (33-25) Em

12 . 12 I Savg 1 c0 [E2]avg 1 c0 [E2m sin2(kx I Savg area avg power area avg . S 1 c0 E2 S 1 0 EB, S: E: B: B: E:

t)]avg. energy/time