"Richard Harrison" wrote
...
"Sz Bialek wrote:
"Why the dipoles exhibit the directional pattern?".

John D. Ktaus wrote on page 3 of his 1950 efition of "Antennas": Fig.
1-3. a length chart for EM waves from the microscopic to the astronomic.
Kraus was a famous radio astromoner. He obviously believed the EM
Spectrum was continuous, so do I.

Terman begins his antenna section in his 1955 edition of "Electronic and
Radio Engineering" on page 864. He explains and illustrates how vectors
form and control the far field radiation pattern of antennas.
Polarization is the direction of the electric field in the antenna and
in the field produced by the antenna.

Electric field is along the wire. If antenna has the ball on the end the
electric field is at right angle to tha ball surface.

Dipoles have nulls at their ends and maxima perpendicular to the
conductor as Terman shows in Fig. 23 on page 865,

At the ends of the dipole the voltage is doubled (at least).

Today, the postman felivered my eagerly awaited copy of W2DU`s
"Reflections III" and I can`t wait to read it either.

In meantime read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave

In Maxwell's hypothesis the electricity is incompressible. Standing waves in
antennas are the experimental prove that the hypothesis is erroneous.

See what Maxwell wrote: "I propose now
to examine magnetic phenomena from a mecha nical point of view, and to
determine what tensions in, or motions of, a medium are capable of producing
the mechanical pheno mena observed. If, by the same hypothesis, we can
connect the phenomena of magnetic attraction with electromagnetic phe nomena
and with those of induced currents, we shall have found a theory which, if
not true, can only be proved to be erroneous by experiments which will
greatly enlarge our knowledge of this part of physics. " From:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Phy...Lines_of_Force

In textbooks are prsented all theories and hipothesis.
It is your choose which one do you prefer: EM, photons or like sound.
S*

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI