P5.1.4

Question 1

What happens to a sound wave once it hits a solid?

Answer 1

It is reflected many times and then absorbed, as it is absorbed the wall vibrates and gets hotter.

If it is a diaphragm of a microphone, that moves and creates an electrical signal to play in loudspeakers

Question 2

What do the pinna and auditory canal in your ear do?

Answer 2

They gather sound waves and direct it to the ear drums which vibrate.

Question 3

What happens to the sound wave once it hits the ear drum?

Answer 3

The ossicles (bones hammer, anvil, stirrup) vibrate and act like levers amplifying the vibration to the inner ear’s oval window.

Question 4

What happens at the cochlea?

Answer 4

At the cochlea the fluid inside transmits the vibrations of the oval window to small hairs, the hairs are attached to sound-detecting cells which release chemical substances that are transmitted to your brain through your auditory nerve.

Question 5

Define resonance.

Answer 5

Large amplitude oscillation that occurs when something oscillates at its natural frequency.

Question 6

Define natural frequency.

Answer 6

The frequency at which an object oscillates when displaced without repeated external force.

Question 7

How do your hairs in your cochlea put sound together?

Answer 7

Different lengthed hairs that resonate at different frequencies.

Question 8

What happens as you get older?

Answer 8

You lose the ability to hear higher frequencies as the shorter hairs are lost.