Why can’t visible light pass through solids?

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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

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

On a technical level it’s because atoms and molecules are sortof tuned to be able to catch at remit different wavelengths of photons.

On a practical level it’s essentialy because you’re made of very similar stuff to most other stuff. It’s hard for eyes to detect photons that tend to pass through them. That and the sun emits most of it’s light in the visible range so it’s the most useful range for things to evolve to use to see.

Like if we evolved on a planet with a cooler sun that mostly emitted IR, we’d probably be calling some section of the IR spectrum visible light.

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