Here is a very brief overview of how our ears work. For a more detailed explanation please see here.

Your ear is made up of three parts – these different parts are often referred to as the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear.

The Outer Ear

The outer ear starts with the bit that sticks out of the side of your head (called the pinna), continues through the ear hole and down a small tunnel called the ear canal until it reaches the eardrum.

The pinna acts like a funnel, catching sounds as they whizz past your head, enhancing them, and directing them down into your ear canal. At the end of the ear canal the sound hits the eardrum and vibrates it.

The Middle Ear

The other side of the ear drum (shown left) is attached to a tiny set of 3 bones called the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup (also known by their Latin names of malleus, incus, stapes) .

As the eardrum vibrates, the hammer, anvil and stirrup move backwards and forwards in time with the vibrations, causing the stirrup to vibrate something like a miniature eardrum called the oval window. It is estimated that this complete mechanism actually amplifies the sound about 22:1.

The Inner Ear

On the other side of the oval window is a salty liquid in a long, curled up container called the cochlea . Because the oval window is being pushed, it forces the liquid away from itself in waves along the length of the cochlea, a bit like the way you can create waves in a bath by sliding backwards and forwards.

These waves will ‘peak’ (i.e. the crest of the wave) at specific places along the cochlea based on how high or low the sound is, triggering a nerve message that tells the brain whereabouts along the cochlea the wave peaked and how strong the peak was. The brain interprets these nerve messages as sound.

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