What do you mean by diffused reflection?

Introduction to Diffuse Reflection Every time I go to the beach, I am fascinated by all of the colored pebbles I find. Tiny stones of pink, yellow, blue, and violet flash under the shallow waves. I can't resist the urge to collect them, and I usually go home with a pocketful of my favorite pebbles. But once I get them washed and dried, I am often disappointed with how dull they all appear. Where did their vibrant colors go? What happened to their glossy sheens? I should have known from the beginning that the dry pebbles would look different because of the effects of diffuse reflection. Specular vs. Diffuse Reflection We've already learned that the reflection of waves involves a change in the direction of waves when they strike a surface. When talking about reflection, we think of waves as straight-line rays. The incident ray is the ray that initially strikes a surface. The reflected ray, obviously, is the one that reflects off a surface. The law of reflection tells us that the angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. In other words, the angle at which the incident ray strikes the surface is going to be the same as the angle at which it reflects. Rays and angles are convenient ways to talk about single waves. But sources of sound and light typically send out many waves at once. How do we talk about the law of reflection when more than one wave is involved? All we have to do is imagine a whole bunch of rays parallel to one another. This picture here could represent a concentrated beam of light waves, say, from a flashlight. Since each ray is hitting the surface at the same angle - the angle of incidence - then each ray reflects at the same angle - the angle of reflection. A person standing in the path of the reflected rays would see a perfect image of the flashlight's beam. It wouldn't be much different from staring into the flashlight itself! This type of reflection, in which a smooth surface causes reflected rays to travel in the same direction, is called specular reflection. read less