Oliver Heywood Comps Presentation
Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
3:10 pm
Olin 141
Physics of Human Hearing
Perceiving sound waves presents a number of physical challenges to which the human auditory system has evolved impressive solutions. Human hearing is sensitive to direction, duration, a range of intensities covering twelve orders of magnitude, and subtleties in pitch within a complicated superposition of frequencies. These feats are accomplished by structures in the ear which take advantage of classic physics principles. This talk will present those principles in context, beginning with a description of sound and then following its propagation through the external, middle and internal ear. Along the way, comparisons will be drawn to electrical signal processing and experiences in everyday hearing will be explained. After this journey through the auditory system we will be prepared to investigate the causes of hearing impairment, as well as cochlear implants, which can provide hearing to the congenitally deaf.