I’ve asked my physics teacher and looked it up a thousand times but i still dont understand it. What i understood from my physics teacher was that atoms are really far apart so some of the wave just “misses” them and goes right through but then wouldn’t light do the same thing?
I understand that x-rays and stuff are higher energy and can pass through materials for that reason but I don’t get why radio waves can do it and why light can’t.
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I unfortunately don’t agree with your teacher.
Electromagnetic waves get blocked if there are electric charges inside a material to absorb the EM energy and convert it into current.
In the case of metals, there are a lot of free electrons that act as conductors so metals can easily block radio waves and light.
The reason why certain plastics can block light but it isn’t a conductor and cannot block radio waves is because plastic contains pigments or other color materials suspended in insulating long carbon chains that act as micro antennae for EM waves in the light wavelength region, but not the radio wave region. So in this sense light can be blocked by plastics but not radio waves.
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