A rigid circular plate was exposed to an essentially plane progressive sound wave, and the sound pressurepat various points on the surface measured relative to the free‐field pressurep0in the undisturbed incident wave by means of a small probe microphone. The diffraction effect |p/p0| was determined as a function of angle of incidence over a range of frequencies beginning with “long” wave‐lengths and extending into the region where the radiusaof the obstacle approximately equals the wave‐length. Expressed in customary notation,14 < ka < 8, wherekis the wave number of the incident wave. Data were obtained for angles of incidence θ = 0, 45, 135, and 180 degrees, where θ is measured with respect to the axis of the obstacle. Similar measurements for θ = 0 and 180° were made for a rigid square plate with side 2a.Approximate contour maps of the quantity |p/p0| in decibels have been prepared from the experimental data portraying the pressure distribution on the surface of the plates.The experimental results are compared with computed values of |p/p0| obtained from an approximate theory in which an attempt is made to solve the problem in terms of a scattered potential calculated as if the face of the obstacle were surrounded by an infinite baffle. The agreement is quite good on the “illuminated” side of the plates, i.e., for θ = 0 and 45° and on the “shadow” side for θ = 180°. The agreement for 135 degree incidence is generally poor, although the computed values show the trends of the experimental data in many instances. At low frequencies the theory gives values which are somewhat too high on the illuminated side and too low on the shaded side.The values of |p/p0| obtained from the exact expression of the diffraction of a plane wave by a disk of zero thickness and for perpendicular incidence are found to be in good agreement with experiment and the approximate theory on the illuminated side (θ = 0) and they agree reasonably well on the shaded side (θ = 180°) for 1⩽ka⩽5. The region near the edge shows discrepancies which are to be expected from the finite thickness of the circular plate (approx.a/12).It is concluded that the approximate theory mentioned above is capable of predicting the diffraction effect |p/p0| on the illuminated side of the obstacles in the frequency range covered by this study for the angles of incidence investigated. On the shadow side the theory can be expected to yield usably approximate answers only for θ = 180°. There are reasonable grounds for the assumption that similar predictions can be made for points on or “near” the surface of “thin” plane obstacles of arbitrary shape and for other acute angles of incidence not too close to θ = 90°.