Do SILK fibres let light pass through it? The reason given by Wikipedia for **silk fibres being lustrous** is that: > Silk fibres have triangular prism-like structure, which allows them to **refract** the incoming light at different angles. By my understanding, refraction takes place only when light enters another medium. ( _This is only for reference_ ) My question is: **Do silk fibres allow light to pass through them?**

Yes, silk allows light through.

I did a google scholar search using terms:

optics of silk

Lots of articles, the article below measures a refractive index of about 1.54

Paywalled except abstract and figures.

Bucciarelli, V. Mulloni, D. Maniglio, R.K. Pal, V.K. Yadavalli, A. Motta, A. Quaranta, A comparative study of the refractive index of silk protein thin films towards biomaterial based optical devices, Optical Materials, Volume 78, 2018, Pages 407-414, ISSN 0925-3467, <

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