Questions and Answers

How do we detect sound?

Human beings can detect sound by the using their ears. The ears are divided into three parts, and the human brain is also essential in helping us understand the multitude of sounds and help us to differentiate between the sounds.

Human ear

Human ear, in general comprises of three parts. These include outer ear, middle ear and inner ear. The role of each is crucial and certainly different. The Outer ear consists mainly of the ear lobe. This is the visible part of the ear. The position of middle ear lies inside the ear cavity and consists of the ear drums along with three bones known as ossicles. They play an important role, since they link the eardrum to the inner ear. On the other hand, inner ear consists of oval windows along with auditory nerve, cochlea tube and the semi-circular canals.

Construction of the ear

Ear lobe receives the sounds from the outside environment and transmits them to the side of the canal (approximately 3cm) in the direction of the ear drum, known as the tympanic membrane. It must be taken into consideration, that compressions together with rarefactions of longitudinal sound waves make the ear drum to vibrate. Every single vibration is resonated by the three bones that exist in the middle ear.

The middle ear also consists of Eustachian tube that is located between the middle ear and the back of the throat. This tube stabilizes the air pressure in the body. Further more, in children the tube is flat and this also gives rise to several ear infections, especially for children.

Finally, the inner ear has two sections. The first section known as vestibular section plays an important in the air pressure inside the ear. The cochlea plays an important part in the hearing. Within a fraction of a moment, inside the cochlea tube, the sensory cells generate neural impulses that are transported by the auditory nerves to brain. Thanks to all these procedures, sound is detected in no time. As far as the length of the ear canal is concerned, human ears are most receptive to the sound frequency emanating at 3,000 Hz. It should be mentioned that the ambit of audibility for the human ear is between 20Hz to 20,000 Hz.

Finally, the fluid that is present in the ear known as cochlear fluid affects the cells of hair that are present in the ear in the Corti area. The reactions of the hair cells become the nerve impulses and are carried to the brain by the acoustic nerve. The two halves of the brain each has an auditory centre, where the sounds and their effects are processed and the memories stored for further use.

A human ear, receives an assortment of vibrations owing to the differences of sound wave frequency. If the higher pitched sound is taken, for example, the air pressure vacillation switches backward and forward more swiftly. This sound is obtained in the form of a higher pitch. In conjunction with smaller quantity of vacillations in air pressure, sound is caught in a lower pitch.

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