Education is the progressive discovery of our ignorance.
Will Durant
A post on another list has me discovering some more of my
own ignorance. Help me plug the gaps. What is going on as
light passes through various mediums. I understand that at
least part of the story can be explained as a process of
light energy being absorbed and reemitted by electrons
within the medium. This absorbance and reemission takes
some time and thus light is slowed down. The question I am
pondering is "How does a substance like glass transmit all
colors?" Is it that the structure of glass offers so many
different arrangements of atoms that virtually all energies
represented by visible light can be absorbed by some
electron somewhere within the substance? What happens to
light whose energy is not correct for absorption within the
medium? Why wouldn't some wavelengths of light simply pass
through the medium untouched at 3.0 x 10^8 m/s?