What makes Glass and some types of Plastic clear? Why couldn’t we make clear metal or other “clear” Materials?
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IMPORTANT NOTE!
Thing are only transparent to SOME light. Glass for example is generally only transparent in the visible spectrum, it blocks infrared (and ultraviolet too, if I remember correctly).
But other materials can be transparent to other light, that’s literally how filters work.
What is transparent to what light is purely dependent on whether that material’s electrons can absorb the light. Why that happens isn’t ELI5, because it has to do with energy levels of eletron orbitals. But if a material can’t absorb that light, it basically doesn’t exist for it.
Metals can interact with almost all light because they have “free electrons”. It’s a property inherent to them being metals, and also why they conduct. You have to do extraordinary things to a metal to make it transparent.
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