What is radiation actually and what are waves. how they travel and how it looks like?

Question

Am studying spectroscopy but am not getting the concepts..

Answer 1

Radiation (in spectroscopy, at least) is composed of photons. Photons are the elementary particles that carry the electromagnetic force. The most common form of photons are visible light, but photons also compose infrared, microwaves, radar, radio waves, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays. All of these are composed of photons.

Photons have zero size and zero mass, but they do carry energy. Although photons are particles, they behave like waves in a number of ways, and in past times it was thought that they really were waves. We know better now, but it is still common to speak of a photon's "wavelength", just as we speak of the Sun "setting" even though it's really the Earth that's moving. Actually, the "wavelength" of a photon is really a measure of its energy content. Shorter wavelengths correspond to more energy per photon, while longer wavelengths have less energy per photon.

My view is that it's often quite useful to think of photons as waves, so there's no big deal about using that kind of language to describe them -- as long as you recognize that the truth is, they're really particles.

Photons travel through vacuum, or through air, or through any other transparent medium like glass or water. Some materials absorb photons, and some absorb photons only of some wavelengths.

Answer 2

A wave is caused by a disturbance in a material. In the case os sea waves the disturbance in the material is the water. In the case of sound the material is air molecules.The shape of a wave depends on the direction the disturbance took place.
Radiation energy transfer has similarity to electron or sound molecules energy transfer. It follows the same formula as soundwaves except its a non collison motion. Where sound waves are motion of air molecules by collision,radiation motion is not by collision.