Hearing

High school (ages 12+)
Human Body

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/hearing

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the scientific name?Audition (the sense of hearing)
2. What is the primary sensory organ?The cochlea within the inner ear
3. What happens when sound enters our ears?Sound waves travel through the outer ear, the pinna gathers them and the ear canal boosts sounds around 2-5 kHz, which are important for understanding speech. The waves hit the eardrum, making it vibrate.
4. How do the tiny bones in the middle ear help us hear?The three tiny bones—malleus, incus, and stapes—act like a lever. They move the vibrations from the eardrum to the oval window, which starts the process inside the inner ear.

Tympanic Membrane: A thin, cone-shaped membrane that vibrates in response to sound waves, transmitting them to the middle ear.
Organ of Corti: The sensory organ of hearing, located in the cochlea, containing hair cells that transduce mechanical vibrations into neural signals.
Tonotopic Organization: The spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequencies are processed in the brain, particularly in the auditory cortex.