Hope an ANVIL Doesn't Drop on Your Head!

  Hey guys! Today we will be talking about hearing, because I'm about to lose my voice :( Honestly it's nice to be writing because I can ACTUALLY say things... I've been writing things on a whiteboard all day! So, yes, back to hearing... let's start learning! Let's go over what hearing is.

  Okay, so as you guys know sound waves are made of vibrations. They are mechanical waves, which means they need a medium to travel through. Sound waves travel at 344 meter p/s, so it takes a sound wave about a hundreth of second to get to our brain, using the process I will explain NOW: 

  Okay, so there are three parts of the ear. The outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. I'll go over each. 

THE OUTER EAR: 

  The outer ear is the visible part of the ear. You know the rim on your outer ear? It actually has a purpose. It catches sounds that are sent to your middle ear. Let's see what that is.

THE MIDDLE EAR:

  This is where all the cool stuff happens. When the sounds go inside the ear, this thing called the ear drum (which works like and actual drum) makes these sounds you hear into vibrations by to be sent to the inner ear, which we'll take about next! 

 

THE INNER EAR

  In the inner ear there are cells with tiny little hairs on them. The vibrations your ears just made tickle the hairs and send signals through nerve fibers to the brain that then translates these into what we hear! This may be a very long process but it only takes about .01 of a second for it to happen!

  

  Next we are going to talk about three of our bodies smallest bones: the anvil, the hammer, and the stirrup. These bones are all in your ear. The hammer passes vibrations to the anvil. The anvil passes helps pass vibrations from the hammer to the stirrup, and the stirrup passes this to the cochlea, which is basically just the little hairy cells again :)

From left to right: Hammer, Anvil, and the Stirrup. 

  Hearing is part of the five senses, and we use our hearing alot. But imagine if we didn't have the ability to hear. Many people are this way, and it's also known as being deaf. Deaf people do have it very hard, and you can become deaf many ways. You can hear something to loud that may burst your eardrum, get an infection, or it may just be hereditary. But don't worry, deaf people have ways to communicate. They use sign language. 

  Sign language is a language used through hand movements and was created by... well, know one really knows. The first accounts of it were in the fifth century. Sign language is relatively easy to learn in my opinion, alot easier than Chinese or Arabic. Well, at least ASL, or american sign language is. Because we already speak english! 

  Well... that's it! Hope you guys enjoyed my blog!! SuperSaraSuperBye! Sorry for the short blog! 

Awesome Sign Language Website

Good For Learning Ear Parts

For Those Younger Folks

Oh Meeba's Blog (Fatima)
Katie (or preferably LaTisha's) blog
Logan's Blog

Good 'Ol Caroloke. She says happy almost leap day! 

How Does This Sound..?

  Hey guys! Today I will be talking about sound. So recently I have become pretty much obsessed with that show, "Switched at Birth", and I am learning some really cool sign language! I would show you if I could... but anyways when Mr. Sellers told us we were learning about sound I immediately thought of that show and how hard it would to be deaf... not able to hear music... yeah that'd suck. I also thought of how I get to post charlieissocoollike's video on sound! WAHOO! Anyways, now that my awesome but totally off topic intro is done... let's start.

  Sound can make you think of many things... music, audio books, even just another person talking to you. But do we ever think about the science behind it? HAHA, I know I don't. This reminds me of a time when my grandpa asked me if I knew how a record player worked. I said "Yeah, of course." kind of uneasily. "You put the record in and it plays music!" Yeah... I need to learn a little more.

  Okay, so now let's talk about some basic elements of sound. Sound is actually a vibration that travels through air made by whatever produced it. Echolocation uses sound to see if they are things in bodies of water, and it used by bats and dolphins. They send out loudly pitched sounds (it must have a high frequency) and the sound bounces back to them so they can detect where whatever theyre searching for is. Now for some vocabulary words! 

Loudness: A human's version of explaining how much energy a wave is carrying. Remember, the more energy a wave is carrying the louder the sound is. Same goes with amplitude. So if you're at a house party, and you say "TURN THE MUSIC DOWN!" and then the other person says "TURN THE MUSIC UP? OKAY!", those waves would be carrying alot of energy :)

Create a gif

Pitch: The certain frequency of a sound. If a sound has a high frequency it will have a HIGH pitch. If a sound has a low frequency it will have a LOW pitch.

Amplitude: Basically the same as frequency. Higher means higher sound. Lower means lower sound.

Echo: When a noise hits a wall, the higher frequencies usually get absorbed. But, if a wall is hard enough then the sound will bonce off, and create and echo-o-o-o-o.

  Now I'm going to explain the doppler effect. Remember the video on lights I showed you last post? Yeah, I'm going to explain it like Charlie because it sounds so much easier. The Doppler Effect is the change in a frequency of a wave when it is moving relative, or away, from you. So if a police car passed you, as it was coming towards you, the pitch of it's sound would be higher, and this is because the sound waves get squished up. As it was going away from you, the pitch would be lower, beacuse the sound waves get stretched out. Below is an extraordinary picture I MADE. 

  Here it is, what you've all been waiting for..... the video. YAY IT FITS PERFECTLY! 

  So that is my blog... hope you enjoyed. SuperSaraSuperBye!

Oh Meeba's Blog (Fatima)

Kiwi's (Or preferably LaTisha's) Blog
Logan's Blog

Website I used for Eccholocation

Sound for those younger folks