How do sound waves travel through the air through your ear?

Answer 1

Okay, here we go:

Th sound waves go through the outer ear first. The sound enters the pinna, and is then funneled into the auditory canal. It goes through the tympanic membrane, and then through the middle ear, starting with the ossicles, which consist of the malleus, incus, and stapes. The ossicles will concentrate the sound. The sound then goes through the inner ear. In the vestibule, the round window moves outward and triggers a wave of fluid in the inner ear. The cilia in the cochlea respond to the vibration, stimulating sensory nerves in the basilar membrane. The auditory nerve is stimulated and sends information to the temporal lobe of the brain.

Sorry, little bit confusing! Hope it helps!

Answer 2

Waves

Waves are disturbances in water, air, or another substance, or in a field of force. Waves on water are perhaps the most familiar example, but sound and light also travel in waves. Waves carry energy from place to place and can also transmit information.

It is easy to generate a wave. If you throw a stone into a large, still pond, a series of disturbances will travel outward from the point where the stone enters the water. The disturbances will be expanding, ring-shaped waves, all with the same center--the entry point of the stone.

Energy produces the disturbances, and the disturbances carry energy. The movement of the stone from your hand to the water's surface carries both matter--that is, the stone--and energy. As the stone penetrates the surface, energy carried by the stone displaces some water. The water closest to where the stone entered rises and then falls, producing a ring-shaped disturbance with the stone's entry point at its center. The falling water displaces other nearby water, causing another sequence of rising and falling, which in turn causes still others. As a result, a wave travels outward as an expanding ring. But the water closest to the stone's entry point has enough energy to rise and fall again several times. So a series of circular waves travel outward.

Another simple wave experiment involves a rope. Ask two people to hold the ends of the rope. When one person moves an end of the rope up and down sharply, energy moves from that person's hand and travels through the rope. The person at the other end will feel the incoming energy move his or her hand. As the energy passes through the rope, the rope moves up and down, but does not move forward.

Scientists call the material in which waves travel the wave medium. Water is the medium for water waves, and the rope is the medium for rope waves. Waves cause little overall displacement of their medium unless the disturbances become unusually large. For example, water waves travel horizontally across the surface of the water, but usually almost all the motion of the water itself is vertical.

Light waves and other kinds of electromagnetic waves are disturbances in a nonmaterial medium--fields of electric and magnetic force. In physics, a field is a region of space in which a particular kind of force can be felt. For example, a magnetic field is a region in which the force of magnetism can be felt. A magnet produces such a field in the space around itself.

Radio waves are another kind of electromagnetic wave. These waves can be controlled to carry information. Radio and television broadcasts and cellular telephone messages travel through the air on radio waves.

Waves may be one-, two-, or three-dimensional. Rope waves travel along the length of the rope and are one-dimensional. Water waves generated by a falling stone form circles that spread out over the surface of the pond. These waves are two-dimensional. Sound originates at a point and travels equally strongly in all directions. Sound waves are spherical and three-dimensional.

Answer 3

Sound waves travel through the vibration of air molecules. The vibrations are picked up by the outer parts of the ear, and they are passed through the ear drum (tympanic membrane) and three bones in your middle ear. Then the cochlea in the inner ear changes the vibrations to nerve impulses, which then travel through the vestibulocochlear nerve to the brain for interpretation.