Yeah, that's the video. If you listen to the guy explaining what happens he says: "... but I don't have enough energy to do that. I simply can't get it up there. Therefore I'm not absorbed and I pass through the material." ( at about 2:46 )
He may well say that, but I would disagree that that's the case - if nothing else, the implcation would be that light propagates at an average of
c through glass, yet we know it propagates at slightly slower speeds.
To clarify my previous post, photons do need enough energy to move electrons up an energy level, but energy levels are complex creatures. In a simple bound system, like an electron bound to a hydrogen nucleus (i.e., a single proton), the energy levels of that electron are crisp and clear and calculatable. In complex molecules like those found in glass, there is what's called the hyperfine structure of energy levels (essentially, each 'main' energy level is split into a blur of sub-levels, and those into more fine levels still) due to interactions with other electrons and atoms, leading almost to an almost continuous spread of energies - the material has energy
bands, where electrons can essentially take any energy. It's not
actually continuous, but there are enough that photons of all but the lowest energies get absorbed.
In any event, the man in the video didn't mean to say (or was wrong to say) that photons
never get absorbed. The only way they wouldn't is if they didn't come near a single atomic nucleus. Reflection, absorption, and transmission, are the three different ways an electron can re-emit an absorbed photon.
Consider this: if transparency to a wavelength is because that wavelength is too low-energy to be absorbed, then, logically, materials should be opaque to high-energy photons - but we know that gamma rays are fatally capable of passing through materials, save thick slabs of lead. In reality, gamma rays are absorbed like any other photon, but they have enough energy to ionize the material. Moreover, the model implies that there's no such thing as a blue filter: anything that allows blue light through should let all lower-energy light (like red light) through as well. But this isn't the case. It's not that blue light isn't absorbed, it's that it's re-emitted, while red and green light are just absorbed.
In short, I disagree with the man: photons do get absorbed by electrons, for however briefly, because the material is not quite as simple as having clear and distant energy levels - it has a blur of energy levels that overlap with those of neighbouring atoms, creating continuous energy bands. Even if the man were correct, the problem arises when you consider what happens when a photon is of sufficient energy to excite an electron - the electron de-excites, and the photon is re-emitted again, leading to transmission or reflection.
