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Home Educational Resources Backgrounders What is Sound and How do we Hear it?

Backgrounders

What is Sound and How do we Hear it?

Sound waves

Sound waves (jop_pop, istockphoto)

Format

Video, Text, Images

Subjects

Biology, Anatomy, Physics, Waves, Sound, Light

Harleen Saini

September 21, 2019

Readability 5

How does this align with my curriculum? Province/Territory

Share on:

Learn how sound travels in waves and how it is measured in this backgrounder.

When you think about sound, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? A song you heard on the
radio this morning? Or maybe something less pleasant, like a school bell?
But, have you ever thought about what sound actually is?

Anatomy of the Ear

Before you can understand sound, you have to understand how your ears work. After all, what goes on
inside your ears is what allows you to hear.

For example, when a person talks, the movement of their mouth creates waves of moving air. These
sound waves travel into your ear canal and hit your eardrum. This causes the ossicles to vibrate. These
three small bones are called malleus, the incus and the stapes. They are also known as the hammer, the
anvil, and the stirrup.

The vibrating ossicles transmit the sound waves to the cochlea. It’s a small, snail-shaped structure inside
your head. The cochlea contains small cells called hair cells that convert sound waves into signals. The
signals then get sent to your brain. And that is what allows you to hear someone’s voice!nglish

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Visit home page

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Home Educational Resources Backgrounders What is Sound and How do we Hear it?

Backgrounders

What is Sound and How do we Hear it?

Sound waves

Sound waves (jop_pop, istockphoto)

Format

Video, Text, Images

Subjects
Biology, Anatomy, Physics, Waves, Sound, Light

Harleen Saini

September 21, 2019

Readability 5

How does this align with my curriculum? Province/Territory

Share on:

Learn how sound travels in waves and how it is measured in this backgrounder.

When you think about sound, what’s the first thing that pops into your head? A song you heard on the
radio this morning? Or maybe something less pleasant, like a school bell?

But, have you ever thought about what sound actually is?

Anatomy of the Ear

Before you can understand sound, you have to understand how your ears work. After all, what goes on
inside your ears is what allows you to hear.

For example, when a person talks, the movement of their mouth creates waves of moving air. These
sound waves travel into your ear canal and hit your eardrum. This causes the ossicles to vibrate. These
three small bones are called malleus, the incus and the stapes. They are also known as the hammer, the
anvil, and the stirrup.

The vibrating ossicles transmit the sound waves to the cochlea. It’s a small, snail-shaped structure inside
your head. The cochlea contains small cells called hair cells that convert sound waves into signals. The
signals then get sent to your brain. And that is what allows you to hear someone’s voice!

Parts of the human ear

The parts of the human ear, including the ear canal, eardrum, cochlea and ossicles (Let’s Talk Science
using an image by Lars Chittka; Axel Brockmann [CC BY 2.5] via Wikimedia Commons).
What are Sound Waves?

As you just learned, you hear when your ears process sound waves produced by an object. The object
produces waves by vibrating. When an object vibrates, it pushes against the surrounding air. The
vibrations cause the air to expand (called rarefaction) and compress. This causes areas of high and low
pressure as the sound moves towards your ears in the form of waves.

Sound waves showing how air molecules compress and expand

Sound waves showing how air molecules compress and expand (Source: ttsz via iStockphoto).

As an example, picture a metal spring, like a Slinky. When you push on one end of the spring, it bunches
up. The bunched-up area slowly travels the length of spring until it reaches the other end. This is like the
areas of high pressure in sound waves. As the spring continues to move, the bunched-up area will start
to stretch out. This is like the areas of low pressure in sound waves. In other words, some areas bunch
up and others stretch out as the wave travels from a vibrating object to your ear.