What gives metals their reflective characteristics?
In: Physics
Think of a wave hitting the shoreline. Since the wave can’t keep moving in the direction of the shore, but the energy has to go somewhere, it ends up going backwards.
This is the principle here – metals are conductors, which physics understands as that the electric field can only exist on their surface. So the light hitting the metal is like the wave hitting the shore – and it ends up being almost entirely reflected.
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