What makes certain substances transparent vs other which are opaque
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IIRC from school it’s basically the object’s ability to reflect, warp, or absorb light. Clear things like glass and plastic just let most of the light that hits them pass through mostly uninterrupted. Curved glass can warp light, which is why if you look through a drinking glass it looks weird sized. Dark colored objects absorb a lot of light, and what you’re seeing when you see a dark object is a lack of reflection. Light objects reflect a lot of light back. Colored objects give their color by only reflecting certain wavelengths of light.
So if we have 4 sheets of paper/plastic for example, one is a normal white sheet, another is a black sheet, another is red, and another is a clear plastic sheet. The white one reflects light, the black one absorbs light, the red one reflects only light within a certain wavelength, and the clear one lets light pass through it.
Opaque just means light cannot pass through. Transparent means light can pass through. You, for example, are opaque. There is also translucent or semitransparent, which allows some light through but not enough to “see through” like something transparent is.
Light oscillates at a particular wavelength. Matter is made up of atoms arranged in more or less geometric patterns. Some things (like glass, and ghosts) have atomic structures that have gaps just the right size for light to pass right through.
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