Why is water transparent to light?

Question

Why does light pass through some objects and not others?

Answer 1

The scattering and absorption of light by matter ultimately depends on the freedom of the charged particles to react to the driving frequency. You can think of it as analogous to a mass on a spring. If the spring is stiff, then it can be driven at a high frequency, but if it's mushy, then it can't. If something gets driven, then it's absorbing energy from the driver. Therefore light of the appropriate frequency--one matched to the intrinsic oscillators of the water--will be strongly scattered and absorbed, while light of other frequencies will pass through relatively unscathed.

Water is relatively transparent to visible light because the electrons are not free to wiggle in that frequency range.

Answer 2

Light as photons is absorbed by the electrons in the electron shell of atoms. (The electrons get moved to a different energy level, then step down again, emitting light again.)

A water molecule is a relatively large molecule for its composition, but it only has ten electrons. The density of the electron cloud is low. Also, the way that the molecule is arranged (with the two hydrogen atoms forming an obtuse angle with the oxygen molecule at the focus) means that the molecules can't line up tightly, which is why water is liquid at room temperature. This gives water a low density. So light has a high chance of moving through water without striking an electron.

When water freezes into ice, it is still highly transparent, but the molecules are much more closely packed, and ice is not as transparent as liquid water.

Answer 3

no, not completely transparent.
Only more than most things.
Only emptyness is completely transparent.

And infrared light doesn't pass at all through water, while it can easily go through a sheet of paper. Mater absorbs light that has a specific energy: an energy related to the size of the molecules that make the matter you're considering
also the light whose energy is close to that of the links between the atoms of the molecules you're considering...

That kind of things.

Answer 4

Because, the water molecules does not absorb much of the energy of the visible lights to human. so it is what we can transparent.

It is much more of energy absorption, if the matter absorb the energy of certain band of frequency of the electromagnetic wave, then that object is not transparent.

Why absorbing certain band of frequency and not others ? It may have to deal with the molecular structure of the materials.

Answer 5

Actually, water is prismatic... when light passes through it, it's refracted and split into the primary wavelengths.

Answer 6

density - light doesnt pass through pack ice which is also water