system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why can't metal be translucent?

When I was really young I used to wonder why, when glass was so fragile, we didn't use see-through metal for windows and windshields. Is such a thing possible, or will it ever be?
gpt
A metal has a partially full conduction band (typically described as a sea of free moving electrons) and there are many energy states for these electrons to jump into if they are excited.  The electrons in this conduction band are typically able absorb energy from all photons of the visible spectrum, so they don't pass through the metal.  Glass and certain ceramics have a band gap that prevents electrons from absorbing photons of specific frequencies, these photons don't have enough energy to allow electrons to overcome the band gap.  If this band gap's size is larger than the energy of a photon in the visible spectrum the photon will pass through the material and not be absorbed.