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The Sense of Sound / All About the Ears
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submitted by Dr. Gary Farr - Contact the author here.
Last Updated June, 13, 2002
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Sound is a series of vibrations moving as waves through air or other gases, liquids, or solids. A ringing bell, for example, sets off vibrations in the air. Detection of these vibrations, or sound waves, is called hearing. The detection of vibrations passing through the ground or water is also called hearing. Some animals can detect only vibrations passing through the ground, and others can hear only vibrations passing through water.
Humans, however, can hear vibrations passing through gases, solids, and liquids. Sometimes sound waves are transmitted to the inner ear by a method of hearing called bone conduction. For example, people hear their own voice partly by bone conduction. The voice causes the bones of the skull to vibrate, and these vibrations directly stimulate the sound-sensitive cells of the inner ear. Only a relatively small part of a normal person's hearing depends on bone conduction, but some totally deaf people can be helped if sound vibrations are transferred to the skull bones by a hearing aid.
Humans hear primarily by detecting airborne sound waves, which are collected by the auricles. The auricles also help locate the direction of sound. Although some people have auricular muscles so well-developed that they can wiggle their ears, human auricles, when compared to those of other mammals, have little importance. Many mammals, especially those with large ears, such as rabbits, can move their auricles in many directions so that sound can be picked up more easily.
After being collected by the auricles, sound waves pass through the outer auditory canal to the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. The vibrations of the eardrum are then transmitted through the ossicles, the chain of bones in the middle ear. As the vibrations pass from the relatively large area of the eardrum through the chain of bones, which have a smaller area, their force is concentrated. This concentration amplifies, or increases, the sound.
When the sound vibrations reach the stirrup, the stirrup pushes in and out of the oval window. This movement sets the fluids in the vestibular and tympanic canals in motion. To relieve the pressure of the moving fluid, the membrane of the oval window bulges out and in. The alternating changes of pressure in the fluid of the canals cause the basilar membrane to move. The organ of Corti, which is part of the basilar membrane, also moves, bending its hairlike projections. The bent projections stimulate the sensory cells to transmit impulses along the auditory nerve to the brain.
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Sound waves being transmitted
from the external ear into the middle ear. |
Human ears are capable of perceiving an extraordinarily wide range of changes in loudness, the tiniest audible sound being about 1 trillion times less intense than a sound loud enough to cause the ear pain. The loudness or intensity of a noise is measured in a unit called the decibel. The softest audible sound to humans is 0 decibels, while painful sounds are those that rise above 140 decibels.
Besides loudness, the human ear can detect a sound's pitch, which is related to a sound's vibration frequency, or the number of sound waves passing into the ear in a given period. The greater the frequency, the higher the pitch. The maximum range of human hearing includes sound frequencies from about 15 to about 18,000 waves, or cycles, per second. Because the human ear cannot hear very low frequencies, the sound of one's own heartbeat is inaudible. At the other end of the scale, a highly pitched whistle producing 30,000 cycles per second is not audible to the human ear, but a dog can hear it.
The third characteristic of sound detected by the human ear is tone. The ability to recognize tone enables humans to distinguish a violin from a clarinet when both instruments are playing the same note. The least noticeable change in tone that can be picked up by the ear varies with pitch and loudness.
Another sonic phenomenon, known as masking, occurs because lower-pitched sounds tend to deafen the ear to higher-pitched sounds. To overcome the effects of masking in noisy places, people are forced to raise their voices.
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Additional information regarding conditions of the ears can be found here.
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