http://www.dosits.

org/science/soundmovement/soundmove/
How does sound move?
When you shine a flashlight, the beam of light travels in a straight line in the direction you point
the flashlight. In the simplest situations, sound also travels in straight lines. In the ocean,
however, interactions between the sound and water make the transmission of sound much more
complicated. These effects include reflection, bending (refraction), and scattering.
The following sections provide more information on how sound travels in the ocean:

Reflection
We have probably all heard echoes - when our voices repeat in large rooms, canyons, or
tunnels. But what are echoes? How are they created? Echoes are reflections. Sound bounces
off a surface such as the canyon walls and returns so you hear it again. Just as a mirror reflects
light, hard surfaces such as canyon walls reflect sound.
If you look at a mirror, you can see images of objects without looking directly at the objects. A
car's rearview mirror allows drivers to see objects behind them without having to turn around.
How does that work? Well, the trick is that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of
reflection. The following picture explains this angle:

The reflector can be any boundary between two media that changes the direction of an
incoming wave, such as a flat mirror. The wave moving towards the reflector is called
the incident wave. It hits the reflector at an angle, and its path of movement is redirected. It
moves away from the reflector at an angle, and is called the reflected wave. A
line perpendicular to the reflector, called a normal line, splits the angle between the incident
wave and the reflected wave into two equal angles, the angle of incidence, depicted in this
figure as "I", and the angle of reflection, depicted in this figure as "R".
A flat mirror is a nearly perfect reflector for light - the amount of energy in the reflected wave is
equal to the amount of energy in the incident wave. The underside of the ocean surface is a
nearly perfect reflector for sound under calm conditions, particularly at low frequencies. When
the incident wave hits other types of boundaries, such as the seafloor, a portion of the acoustic
energy is reflected back into the original medium (the ocean), and a portion of the energy is
transmitted into the second medium (the seafloor). The amount of sound that is reflected and

transmitted depends on the acoustic properties of the two media and on the angle of incidence.
The more similar the acoustic properties of the two media, the less reflection and the more
transmission occurs. The less similar the two media, the more reflection and the less
transmission occurs. A seafloor of hard bedrock is a better reflector than watery sand.
Therefore, sound waves will bounce better off the hard bottom.

Refraction
What do you see when you place a pencil in a glass of water?

The pencil appears to bend where it enters the water. The pencil is not really bent. The light we
see has bent as it moves from water to air. This is called refraction. This occurs because light
moves more slowly in water than in air.
You can see how this happens by looking at lines of marchers with their arms intertwined
moving from pavement onto sand. The marchers move faster on the pavement than in the sand.
If the marchers in a given line all move from the pavement to the sand at the same time, nothing
happens to their direction of movement. However, they slow down, causing the lines of
marchers to be spaced closer together. Their direction of travel does not change.

Figure adapted from Oceanography, An Invitation to Marine Science, 3rd edition by Garrison.

If a line of marchers moves at an angle from the pavement to the sand, the line bends because
the marchers in the sand move more slowly than those still on the pavement. It is this effect that
makes the pencil look bent.


Figure modified from Oceanography, An Invitation to Marine Science, 3rd edition by Garrison.

Sound is refracted just as light is. Refraction occurs not only when light moves from water to air,
but whenever the speed of light changes. Similarly, a sound wave traveling through the ocean is
bent whenever it encounters changes in the speed of sound. Since sound speed changes with
changes in temperature, salinity, and pressure, a sound wave will refract as it moves through
the ocean.

Scattering
When is seawater not just seawater? All the time! Seawater has bubbles, suspended particles,
organisms, and many other things in it. How does this affect sound as it travels through
seawater? Let's think about it. Have you ever used a flashlight? Most of the time, the flashlight
creates a circle of light on objects that you point it towards, perhaps the ground, a car, or a tree.

However, what happens when it is foggy out? You may have noticed that you can now see the
beam of the flashlight.

What is different? When it is foggy out, the air contains many water molecules. When you shine
the flashlight in fog, the light is scattered in all directions off the water molecules, making the
beam of the flashlight visible. When the light is scattered, it does not travel as far. Therefore on
foggy nights the headlights of a car do not project as far as on clear nights.
Sound is a wave just like light. The same thing happens in the ocean to sound waves that
happens to the flashlight beam. The amount of scattering is affected by the size of the object
(the scatterer) and the wavelength of the sound. An object will be a significant scatterer if its size
is comparable to or bigger than the wavelength of the sound. You can calculate the wavelength
of sound in seawater by dividing the speed of sound [approximately 1500 meters per second] by
the frequency of the sound.

For example, a 200 Hz sound will have a wavelength of 7.5 meters (1500 meters per second
divided by 200 cycles per second = 7.5 meters). If the object is much smaller than one
wavelength of the sound, the sound will tend to travel around the object in its path and not be
significantly affected. That is why scientists use high frequency sound to look for small objects,
such as fish, in the ocean.