X rays can go through solids.
Radio waves can go through solids.
And both of these are on either side of visible light in the spectrum. Why can’t visible light go through solids?
In: Physics
All EM waves can pass through solids. It’s just that, depending on the material and the EM wave, it’s more or less likely to get absorbed on its way through. Done materials like glad let all visible light through, for example.
Radio waves can make it through most materials because they are low frequency and have a low chance of hitting anything as they pass through a material.
Waves closer to visible light can get absorbed by many materials more easily, hence why everything doesn’t look slightly transparent.
X-rays also tend to get absorbed, which is part of why they are so damaging. It’s also part of the point, as they get blocked more by your bones than your flesh, which is how you can see your skeleton with x-rays. You could theoretically use visible light for this as well, but because there is so much visible light already in the world, it would be difficult to pick out the few waves that would make it through your body. X-rays, by contrast, don’t generally occur naturally.
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