Did you hear something?? Was it a soft sound like the wind blowing through the trees, or maybe a loud sound like a fire truck siren? Sounds are everywhere and you have two parts of your body that let you hear those sounds -your ears!
Your ears are very important. Just think what it would be like if you couldn’t hear your friends talking, a dog barking, the telephone ringing or your favorite song!
There are 3 parts to your ear: the outer ear,
the middle ear, and the inner ear. These parts all work together so you can hear.
The outer ear is what you can see and where you whisper a secret to your best friend. It collects the sound waves and moves them through the ear canal to the eardrum.
The eardrum vibrates when the sounds reach it and the vibrations cause movement from the hammer to the anvil and then to the stirrup. These are the 3 smallest bones in your body. Together they make up the ossicles.
The vibrations then make their way into the inner ear and the chochlea. It’s shaped like a snail shell, filled with liquid, and covered in tiny hair cells called cilia. The vibrations move the liquid and cause the tiny hair cells to start moving. They send that signal down the auditory nerve and to the brain.
The brain puts it all together and we have sound! That’s how we can hear that show on television, your teacher, and those favorite songs!
Excessive noise exposure is one of the leading causes of hearing loss. The tiny hair cells in the inner ear are easily damaged by loud noise. Once you lose them, they NEVER grow back!
Did You Know?
In the inner ear we have the semi-circular canals and they have nothing to do with our hearing. They help us to stay balanced!
The stapes is the smallest bone in your body. It is only 0.25 to 0.33 cm long [0.10 to 0.13 inches] and weighs only 1.9 to 4.3 milligrams!
