system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What does it mean to say that waves in the electric field move perpendicular to waves in the magnetic field?

The pictures in my textbook show them as two transverse waves, but that doesn't quite make sense to me. Which way is 'up' to the electric field?
gpt
The fact that they're transverse just means that the electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to the direction of propagation. So the electric field, the magnetic field, and the momentum of the light wave are all mutually perpendicular vectors.