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Sixty Symbols on Why Glass is Transparent

shogunkai says...

He said that the light was monochromatic, so it is just that wavelength and not a spectrum.

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@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Estuffing17" title="member since May 2nd, 2010" class="profilelink">Estuffing17
Actually, because visible green light is at a higher energy level than red light, if an objects energy gap is high enough to let green light through, then red light will also pass through because it has even lower energy levels, not the other way around.
That's exactly what I said in my example.
As far as a translucent green material is concerned, when we perceive an object to have color, it is because that objects atoms are arranged in such a way that it reflects that wavelength of light (green in this case) back to our eye, while either absorbing, refracting or letting pass through photons of other wavelengths. Just because a piece of glass is green does not mean it will not allow other higher and lower energy photons to pass through it.
Green glass, as I understand it, is green because it's filtering out other colors. It's a simplified example, yes. Obviously you can have a little yellow or blue or whatever mixed in and it still looks "green".
But the energy gap explanation seems to mean that "green" glass would be letting all red, orange, and yellow light through since they are lower energy levels. It's one thing to say a little bit of another color is coming through and it's imperceptible. If all the "weaker" colors are coming through along with the green, it doesn't seem to me like it would look very green.

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