Translucent in the context of Frosted glass

Opacity is the measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation, especially visible light. In radiative transfer, it describes the absorption and scattering of radiation in a medium, such as a plasma, dielectric, shielding material, glass, etc. An opaque object is neither transparent (allowing all light to pass through) nor translucent (allowing some light to pass through). When light strikes an interface between two substances, in general, some may be reflected, some absorbed, some scattered, and the rest transmitted (also see refraction). Reflection can be diffuse, for example light reflecting off a white wall, or specular, for example light reflecting off a mirror. An opaque substance transmits no light, and therefore reflects, scatters, or absorbs all of it. Other categories of visual appearance, related to the perception of regular or diffuse reflection and transmission of light, have been organized under the concept of cesia in an order system with three variables, including opacity, transparency and translucency among the involved aspects. Both mirrors and carbon black are opaque. Opacity depends on the frequency of the light being considered. For instance, some kinds of glass, while transparent in the visual range, are largely opaque to ultraviolet light. More extreme frequency-dependence is visible in the absorption lines of cold gases. Opacity can be quantified in many ways (see: Mathematical descriptions of opacity).

Different processes can lead to opacity, including absorption, reflection, and scattering.

Ice pellets (Commonwealth English) or sleet (American English) is a form of precipitation consisting of small, hard, translucent balls of ice. Ice pellets are different from graupel ("soft hail"), which is made of frosty white opaque rime, and from a mixture of rain and snow, which is a slushy liquid or semisolid. Ice pellets often bounce when they hit the ground or other solid objects, and make a higher-pitched "tap" when striking objects like jackets, windshields, and dried leaves, compared to the dull splat of liquid raindrops. Pellets generally do not freeze into other solid masses unless mixed with freezing rain. The METAR code for ice pellets is PL (PE before November 1998).

Rain and snow mixed (American English) or sleet (Commonwealth English) is precipitation composed of a mixture of rain and partially melted snow. Unlike ice pellets, which are hard, and freezing rain, which is fluid until striking an object where it fully freezes, this precipitation is soft and translucent, but it contains some traces of ice crystals from partially fused snowflakes, also called slush. In any one location, it usually occurs briefly as a transition phase from rain to snow or vice-versa, but hits the surface before fully transforming. Its METAR code is RASN or SNRA.

A chandelier (/ˌʃændəˈlɪər/) is an ornamental lighting device, typically with spreading branched supports for multiple lights, designed to be hung from the ceiling. Chandeliers are often ornate, and they were originally designed to hold candles, but now incandescent light bulbs are commonly used, as well as fluorescent lamps and LEDs.

A wide variety of materials ranging from wood and earthenware to silver and gold can be used to make chandeliers. Brass is one of the most popular materials, but glass is most commonly associated with chandeliers. Classic glass and crystal chandeliers have arrays of hanging "crystal" prisms to illuminate a room with refracted light. Contemporary chandeliers may assume a more minimalist design, and they may illuminate a room with direct light from the lamps or are equipped with translucent glass shades covering each lamp. Chandeliers produced nowadays can assume a wide variety of styles that span modernized and traditional designs or a combination of both.

In infrared astronomy, the H band refers to an atmospheric transmission window centred on 1.65 micrometres with a Full width at half maximum of 0.35 micrometres (in the near-infrared).

Save for a limited amount of absorption by water vapor, Earth's atmosphere is highly translucent at the wavelengths covered by the H band. The window is also notably less likely to be contaminated by infrared excess than other bands.

Salt-glaze or salt glaze pottery is pottery, usually stoneware, with a ceramic glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during the higher temperature part of the firing process. Sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating of sodium silicate. The glaze may be colourless or may be coloured various shades of brown (from iron oxide), blue (from cobalt oxide), or purple (from manganese oxide).

Except for its use by a few studio potters, the process is obsolete. Before its demise, in the face of environmental clean air restrictions, it was last used in the production of salt-glazed sewer-pipes. The only commercial pottery in the UK currently licensed to produce salt glaze pottery is Errington Reay at Bardon Mill in Northumberland which was founded in 1878.

Onionskin or onion skin is a thin, lightweight, strong, often translucent paper, named for its resemblance to the thin skins of onions. It was usually used with carbon paper for typing duplicates in a typewriter, for permanent records where low bulk was important, or for airmail correspondence. It is typically 25–39 g/m (9-pound basis weight in US units), and may be white or canary-colored.

In the typewriter era, onion skin often had a deeply textured cockle finish which allowed for easier erasure of typing mistakes, but other glazed and unglazed finishes were also available then and may be more common today.

Hyaline cartilage is the glass-like (hyaline) and translucent cartilage found on many joint surfaces. It is also most commonly found in the ribs, nose, larynx, and trachea. Hyaline cartilage is pearl-gray in color, with a firm consistency and has a considerable amount of collagen. It contains no nerves or blood vessels, and its structure is relatively simple.

The nictitating membrane (from Latin nictare, to blink) is a transparent or translucent third eyelid present in some animals that can be drawn across the eye from the medial canthus to protect and moisten it while maintaining vision. Most Anura (tailless amphibians), some reptiles, birds, and sharks, and some mammals (such as cats, beavers, polar bears, seals, sheep, and aardvarks) have full nictitating membranes; in many other mammals, a small, vestigial portion of the nictitating membrane remains in the corner of the eye. It is often informally called a third eyelid or haw; the scientific terms for it are the plica semilunaris, membrana nictitans, or palpebra tertia.

Subsurface scattering (SSS), also known as subsurface light transport (SSLT), is a mechanism of light transport in which light that penetrates the surface of a translucent object is scattered by interacting with the material and exits the surface potentially at a different point. Light generally penetrates the surface and gets scattered a number of times at irregular angles inside the material before passing back out of the material at a different angle than it would have had if it had been reflected directly off the surface.

Subsurface scattering is important for realistic 3D computer graphics, being necessary for the rendering of materials such as marble, skin, leaves, wax and milk. If subsurface scattering is not implemented, the material may look unnatural, like plastic or metal.

Vezzi porcelain is porcelain made by the Vezzi porcelain factory in Venice, Italy, established in 1720 by the Vezzi family. It was the first porcelain factory in Italy, after the experimental Medici porcelain of the 16th century. It operated only until 1727, so surviving pieces are few, probably fewer than 200. It made "true" hard-paste porcelain, and was only the third factory in Europe to do so, hiring technicians from Meissen porcelain and Vienna porcelain, the first two makers.

The great majority of wares are teaware: cups, saucers, teapots and a few small plates. Many cups are beakers without handles, and the teapots, which form an unusually large proportion of the surviving pieces, often have moulded shapes, including relief decoration. The bodies can be white, but often tend to grey; they are very translucent. The shapes often draw from silverware, but they are brightly painted in a variety of styles, influenced by the northern factories and Asian export wares.

Breakout is a 1976 action video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades; in Japan, it was released by Namco. The game was designed by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow and prototyped via discrete logic chips by Steve Wozniak with assistance from Steve Jobs. In the game, eight rows of bricks line the top portion of the screen, and the player's goal is to destroy the bricks by repeatedly bouncing a ball off a paddle into them. The concept was predated by Ramtek's Clean Sweep (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's own Pong (1972). The arcade version of Breakout uses a monochrome display underneath a translucent colored overlay.

The game was a worldwide commercial success. It was among the top five highest-grossing arcade video games of 1976 in the U.S. and Japan, and among the top three in both countries for 1977. A port of the game was published in 1978 for the Atari 2600 with color graphics. An arcade sequel was released in 1978, Super Breakout, which introduced multiple bouncing balls. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs went on to found the Apple Computer Company with Ronald Wayne. The company's influential Apple II computer, designed mostly by Wozniak, has technical elements inspired by Breakout's hardware.