What are Electromagnetic Waves?

Isaac Newton showed that visible light was actually made up of a spectrum of colours, from red to violet. We call this the visible spectrum. Are there any "colours" before and after that we can't see?

We now know that this is just a very small part of a much bigger family of waves called the electromagnetic spectrum.

Why are they called electromagnetic waves? They are made up of oscillating electric and magnetic fields at right angles to each other. If this sounds complicated, it is! But don't worry, you don't really need to know it. The movie below shows a radio wave being absorbed by an aerial.