Thread: why some materials reflect light more than others?

why some materials reflect light more than others?

That depends on whether the atoms which array in the surface of the matter is ordered, and the energy level of the surface atoms.

When EM wave hits matter, different matter have different strength of atomic force field, therefor different reflection.

I thought, maybe there is a charged tiny thing exist and fill up the space (like ether). it is too small so we can not detect its mass/charge yet or it has no mass but only charge. Suppose it really exist and carry negative charge and its strength is like e/10^100 (let's call it ?tron).

Then, we can image ?trons attracted by proton/nuclear and form a dense ball around it. And mean time ?trons repelled by electron and form an empty/loose ball around it. Because the proton/nuclear and electron attracts each other, the two balls (one dense and one loosed ?tron ball) will attract each other and form atom. The rest of the space is still fill up with ?tron and its ?tron density is in between the two kind of balls.

In a light atom model, like H, we see two ?tron balls, one is the proton with dense ?trons around it, the other one is empty/loosed ?trons around electron. (kind of like an Earth sized beach ball float on Earth sized ocean. The ocean is the nuclear ball and the beach ball is the electron ball)

The H atom act as an dipole, has to marry another H to form H2 to be stable.

For a heavier atom model, like carbon, we see a denser nuclear ball with 6 electron balls around it.

In a very heavy atom, we see very dense nuclear ball with more layers of electron balls around it.

Just a hypothesis so far.