Your ear

How does hearing work?

You can see water waves

But you can’t see air waves because they are invisible. If it’s windy outside, you feel it very clearly. On the moon it is never windy – because there is no air – and therefore no air waves, you cannot hear up there n the moon.

A sound wave is captured by your outer ear and passed through your ear canal where it bounces on the eardrum causing your eardrum to vibrate.

Your eardrum then wobbles and nudges the first ossicle which is a very small bone and looks like a hammer. The ‘hammer’ pushes the anvil (which is the second bone in your ear), this transfers the sound to the third bone called the stapes. The vibration is then pressed into the cochlea.

In the cochlea there is fluid. The vibration keeps going and begins to slosh through the liquid within the cochlea forming a wave of water.

Within this wave very small hairs move. The hair cells send a signal to the auditory nerve which is connected to your brain. It is your brain that translates these signals and understands what that sound is.