  This paper shows that the effective dielectric permitivity for the
metamaterials used so far to obtain left-handed materials, with strip wires
0.003cm thick, is dominated by the imaginary part at 10.6- 11.5 GHz
frequencies, where the band pass filter is, and therefore there is not
propagation and the wave is inhomogeneous inside the medium. This is shown from
finite-differences time-domain calculations using the real permitivity values
for the Cu wires. For thicker wires the losses are reduced and the negative
part of the permitivity dominates. As the thickness of the wires is critical
for the realization of a good transparent left- handed material we propose that
the strip wires should have thickness of 0.07-0.1cm and the split ring
resonators 0.015-0.03cm
