Re: Question from Eisberg and Resnick.

From: Puppet_Sock (puppet_sock_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 12/21/04 

Date: 21 Dec 2004 07:58:40 -0800

robert j. kolker wrote:
[metal vs glass question snipped]
> If someone would be kind enought explain what is what to an over the
> hill retired computer programmer (me) in words of three syllable or
> less, I would be much in your debt.

Well, for starters, some electrons in metal are relatively free to
move around in the metal. That means they can behave like a gas.
In glass, the electrons are much more constrained. So they can't
behave like a gas, but like local vibrators. That means that a
transparent material is going to behave like a lot of point source
reflectors. Compare that to the metal where the electrons can
move around and occupy pretty much any energy (within a band)
that they need to in order to interact with photons.
Socks

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