What makes Glass and some types of Plastic clear? Why couldn’t we make clear metal or other “clear” Materials?
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The difference lies in the way electrons are associated with the atoms. For light to pass through a transparent material, each photon of light striking the surface of a wall of atoms must be captured and incorporated into the energy structure of the atom (an electron changes from a lower energy condition to a higher). That energy is held for a while, then burped out as a photon and absorbed by a neighboring atom. The photon is passed from atom to atom in a take.in-burp.out chain until the atom escapes on the far side of the wall of atoms.
Metals cant do that because the outermost electrons of a metal atom are not really attached to any atom, they just float around in kind of electron soup. That’s why metals make pretty good conductors of electricity. When a photon hits this soup, the electrons ring like a bell but don’t suck the photon in. The ringing just bounces to photon back so the metal surface reflects the light rather than passes it through.
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