Is it possible for sound to be reflected?

Answer 1

Yes. Sound is reflected all the time, and off a wide variety of surfaces. You've heard an echo. That's where a lot of sound is reflected and returned to you in a dramatic demonstration of the reflection of sound. The reflecting surface is generally a bit of a distance away to allow you to detect the delay before the sound retuns. But sound is reflected all the time off all kinds of things around us every day. We just don't notice all the reflected sound very much because we're not "attuned" to it. Normal conversation in, say, a department store causes some sound to be reflected. In fact, some sound will always be reflected because it cannot all be absorbed by the surfaces onto which it impinges. It could come back at us off the floor or the walls, and, in fact, it does. It's the same everywhere. Think about that. We just don't notice it very much because we've sort of "screened it out" from consciousness. In addition, sound moves pretty quickly and covers short distances almost in an instant. This applies to situations where we are in a room or a building. The sound that is reflected will give a net "quality" to what we are hearing. It is difficult to pick up on reflected sound because a lot of the sound we're used to hearing is not that loud, and the sound that is reflected to us off walls and the ground returns so quickly, we have trouble consciously separating it from the initial sound waves. Our ears are sensitive to tiny differences in the arrival times of sounds, and that's how we sense the direction a sound came from. But sensing reflected sounds around us is generally not something we do every day unless there is something dramatic going on. Conduct some experiments around hard surfaces with some space between them. A school gym might be a place to start to notice what is being discussed here.