speed
The product of a wave's wavelength and its frequency , , is the speed of the wave. Thus, for electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum: c = 2.998 10 8 ms 1 = Wavelength and frequency are inversely proportional: As the wavelength increases, the frequency decreases. The inverse proportionality is illustrated in Figure 6.3. This figure also shows the electromagnetic spectrum, the range of all types of electromagnetic radiation. Each of the various colors of visible light has specific frequencies and wavelengths associated with them, and you can see that visible light makes up only a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because the technologies developed to work in various parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are different, for reasons of convenience and historical legacies, different units are typically used for different parts of the spectrum. For example, radio waves are usually specified as frequencies typically in units of MHz , while the visible region is usually specified in wavelengths typically in units of nm or angstroms .