P5.1.4 - Sound in solids and the ear

Question 1

What happens when you shout in a large room?

Answer 1

You hear echoes but after the sound is absorbed which makes the particles in the wall vibrate making it a bit hotter

Question 2

How does your ear detect sound?

Answer 2

• The outer ear gathers the sound waves and directs it to the air drum, which vibrates
• As the ear drum vibrates it makes the ossicles vibrate
• The ossicles’s job is to act like small levers to amplify the vibration and pass it onto the inner ear through the oval window
• The cochlea contains fluid which retransmits the movements of the oval window to small hairs on the inside wall of the cochlea
• These hairs are attached to sound-detecting cells that release chemical substances which makes nerves send a signal down the auditory nerve to your brain
• Your brain processes the signal and you hear the sound

Question 3

What does to amplify mean?

Answer 3

Increasing the amplitude makes it louder

Question 4

Why is it harder to hear higher frequencies as you get older?

Answer 4

As you get older you lose the shorter hairs

Question 5

What is natural frequency?

Answer 5

The frequency at which an object oscillates if it is displaced

Question 6

What is resonance?

Answer 6

The large-amplitude oscillation that happens when you make something oscillate at its natural frequency