Hearing sound - Higher
The human ear detects sound. The outer ear, which is also known as the The outer part of the human ear. , funnels the sound into the The tube that runs from the outer ear to the eardrum. . Sound waves travel along the ear canal and cause the eardrum to vibrate. Three small bones transmit these vibrations to the Part of the inner ear that contains nerve endings that transmit sound vibrations to the auditory nerve. . This produces electrical signals which pass through the Part of the inner area that carries sound impulses from the cochlea to the brain. to the brain, where they are interpreted as sound.
The cochlea is only stimulated by a limited range of frequencies. This means that humans can only hear certain frequencies. The range of normal human hearing is 20 Hertz (Hz) to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz).
The hairs in the human cochlea have different lengths and vibrate at different frequencies of sound. This is how the human ear puts together an electrical signal that contains all the different frequencies in the sound wave being received. The range of frequencies that a person can hear depends on the range of lengths of hairs in the cochlea. As a person ages, the shorter hairs that respond to higher frequencies stop working - this means that people tend to lose the ability to hear higher frequencies of sound as they grow older.
