system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can water be reflective and see through at the same time?
gpt
Pretty much any object absorbs, reflects, and transmits some amount of light that strikes it. Nothing is perfectly absorptive, transmissive, or reflective. This is also why objects can display colors when you shine white light on them, they're selectively reflecting certain wavelengths and absorbing others. The color you see is the reflected light. So it's not unique to water.

Water, air (usually), glass, are objects that transmit lots of light (it passes through them without getting scattered), and very little reflects off of them. But still some does.