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Why does light reflect in a mirror but go straight through glass?
Thomas Fox, Fortrose, Highland, UK
Mirrors such as those found in a bathroom tend to be made from a sheet of transparent glass or plastic and a layer of smooth, polished aluminium (or in older mirrors, silver).
The reason why light goes straight through glass but bounces off metal lies within the individual structure of these materials.
Glass is an amorphous solid, which means it has cooled too quickly to form a regular crystalline structure. As a consequence, when a photon of light collides with the atoms…
