This might be a little lower than the usual grist of this forum but I got to wondering about transparency, specifically why is any matter transparent. After quite a bit of googling I found out: Transparent materials are those that are good insulators. Which means they do not have many free electrons to "grab" or be influenced by photons as they go by thus interfering with photon propogation. I went "oh okay, makes sense" and went on with my day. A couple hours later I realized that salt is also transparent and I ground to a halt. Salt is a good conductor Which means that it does have free electrons to grab photons. Which means I still do not know why anything is transparent, or reflective for that matter. I've spent quite a bit of time googling and havent got a definitive answer yet and thought I'd ask the group. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance
What makes salt water a good conductor is no the salt. In fact, when it is in aqueous solution form, the salt is no longer NaCl, what it is instead is Na+ and Cl- ions. These ions are mobile and can propagate a current quite nicely. -AntonK
Ah, that answers that, after a bit more googling it turns out that pure salt is not a conductor. Okay why are things reflective then?
