By Kaylene and Indigo

Our Experiment is called Direction Detection (as you already know). The instructions were to close your eyes and then someone would clap and you would point at the direction, then you would close 1 ear and both eyes open and try again.

Question: If the person has 1 ear closed will she still be able to hear the claps? Hypothesis: We think that when we close one ear we wont always point in the right direction.

 When

Indigo did it:

BOTH EARS OPEN 6 2 1 EAR CLOSED 3 5

POINTED Pointed correctly Pointed wrongly

When

Kaylene did it:

BOTH EARS OPEN 7 1 1 EAR CLOSED 3 5

POINTED Pointed correctly Pointed wrongly

We found that when we had both ears opened we got majority right, when we had 1 ear closed we got majority wrong.

Our hypothesis was correct, when we had 1 ear closed we didnt point in the right direction much. We think that it is like that because 1 ear is closed and maybe its caused by when you have 2 ears open you hear more clearly than with 1 ear. The Scientrific magazine says its caused because with one ear it takes a longer time for the sound to get to the ear and the ears are at opposite sides of our head they hear the sounds at different times, our brains can tell the difference and uses this to help them locate the sound but because one ear is closed its harder to tell where the sound is coming from.

We wonder If we clapped on the side of the closed ear, would it make a difference? In the magazine instructions they say to fold your ear in, if we do not do this would it make a difference? How could we use this in real life? When we are listening People who are getting older or cannot hear so well on 1 ear can learn to recognize the sounds differences to help them in life.