In the emission or absorption of electromagnetic radiation by small objects, generally speaking, the smaller the size‐wavelength ratio and the higher the modal number, the larger will be the ratio of reactive to real power flow. However, if the source is internally lossless and free of constraints, charge‐current relationships may exist which produce combinatory sets of multipolar electric and magnetic moments for any modal number which yields zero net reactive power flow—a resonant condition. The needed reactive energy for resonance to occur decreases with increasing modal number. The radiativeQis very large and will give rise to reactive forces that are quite capable of driving an atomic source to radiate energy h&slash;&ohgr; during electronic transition times. When resonance occurs, the resulting radiation has an energy–to–angular‐momentum ratiom&ohgr;, wheremis an integer, and a combinatory set of modal coefficients exists for which the radiation is largely directed in that the ratio of exchanged momentum to exchanged energy is greater than 0.8/c. Other mechanisms may supply the momentum increment needed to make the exchanged ratio be exactly 1/c. This continuum‐field description appears to be adequate to describe the radiative portion of atomic electronic transitions, treated as a boundary‐value problem.