Thursday 27 February 2014


                                             How The Ear Works

The human ear has three main parts, the outer ear which includes the auditory canal, the middle ear and the inner ear, the outer ear acts as a glove and funnel by catching the sound and funnelling in towards the tympanic membrane otherwise known as the ear drum, the tympanic membrane separates the ear canal or the ‘funnel’ from the middle ear, the middle ear holds three small bones that help boost and move the sound to the inner ear, these three bones are known as ossicles are singly known as the malleus, the incus and the stapes, within the inner ear we have a coiled tissue tube called the cochlea it contains tubes with fluid inside, in one of the tubes minuscule hairs pick up the vibrations that travel through the air and convert them into nerve impulses, in short the cochlea changes sound to neurologic signals and the auditory nerve which takes sound to the brain. The brain then interprets what the sound is.

All sources of sound send vibrations in the air to the ear, the vibrations get funnelled through the ear, through the external ear canal and strike the tympanic membrane causing it to vibrate, those vibrations are then passed through the ossicles in the middle ear, which then gets sent to the cochlea,