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Ears are pretty important. When they work as expected, they let you enjoy music, watch TV without subtitles, and talk to your friends (can you believe what Brayden wore to school yesterday?). But they’re good for way more than that too. They’re a part of the system that helps you navigate the world. Think about it: when someone calls your name from another part of the room, you don’t have to look all the way around to find them. You can tell if they’re behind you, in front of you, to the left or the right, and you do it without even thinking about it. Well, today’s experiment is going to make you think about it by messing with your world a bit.
Materials:
- Two funnels
- Two pieces of flexible plastic tubing, about a foot long each
- Tape
Process:
- Put one end of a tube around the tip of one of the funnels. Tape it securely in place. Repeat with the other funnel and tube.
- Tape your funnel/tube constructions together at the funnels’ tips, making sure that the funnels are facing in opposite directions.
- Place the funnels on top of your head and run the tubes around down into your ears. You want the left funnel tube to be in your right ear and the right funnel tube to be in your left ear.
- Spend some time just walking around, doing your normal daily routine with your new backwards ears. What’s different? What’s weird, or more difficult?
- Now do a proper experiment. Close your eyes and have a friend or family member hide and then start calling out for you. Try to find them with your hearing reversed. What do you notice?
Summary
Having an ear on both sides of your head is really useful. Without two ears, you would have a hard time locating the source of a sound. Two are better than one because there is some space between them, which means sounds from different directions will hit one ear before the other. If there’s a sound to your left, the sound waves travel towards you and hit your left ear a split second before your right ear. A split second isn’t a lot, but your brain is smart enough and quick enough to use that difference in timing to process the direction the sound came from.
Since your brain is constantly processing and interpreting sounds from all over, your ears are a very important part of your body’s system for knowing where you are in relation to the things around you. Your reflexes, like, say, turning towards a loud bang, are tied to this system, so when you reverse your hearing, everything goes haywire. Your ears are telling your brain the opposite of what’s actually happening, and you have to carefully think to do something that you would normally do naturally!
Human ears are pretty cool, but they’re not the best ones out there in the animal kingdom by a long shot. If you have a cat, spend some time watching its ears. They’re like little satellite dishes. Not only do they work the same way yours do to tell the cat’s brain which direction sounds come from, but they can also swivel individually to face a sound! Spend some time when your cat is calm or taking a catnap making small noises. You’ll be able to watch them follow you with their ears. That would be a cool ability.
Want more Saturday Science? See all of our at-home activities on the blog or Pinterest.
