Why can you see through H2O as both a liquid and a solid but you cannot see through something like Au (gold) in a solid state? Is this a matter of density?
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It isn’t about density. Water is actually fairly dense, especially in liquid form. Transparency, refraction, reflection, and absorption of light is extremely complex. But it mostly boils down to the chemical properties of a material.
Remember that the part of an atom that directly interacts with the world around it is the outer electron shell. Keep in the back of your mind that this, and everything else I’ll be saying here is a heavy simplification. That outer electron shell may absorb or reflect light, or may largely ignore it. That depends on the atom, the molecule, and the light. If it reflects light, the molecules may be structured in such a way that light tends to bounce through, rather than back the other way.
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