Don't put that in your ear!!! How many times have you heard that when you were young? Well there is a very good reason you should be careful with our ears. Not only are they a means of getting important information (like a physics lecture) but they also are involved in your balance and are a major source of heat loss for your body.
             To understand how the ear functions, we must first know what sound is and how it travels. Sound is the compression and rarefaction of the air molecules, caused by the vibration of a solid, liquid, or gas. Every wave has two characteristics that define a sound and that is amplitude and a frequency. A frequency is the amount of waves cycles that pass a given area per second, and this is what gives sound it unique tone. Amplitude is the height of each wavelength and that determines how loud a noise is. Since everything in the universe has its own frequency, (wave pattern) different wavelength, come from different vibrating objects. Depending on the type of frequency caused by the pressure wave, the human ear will pick up as a different pitches.
             The human ear consists of three regions, outer, middle, and inner ear. Sound waves enter the outer ear and vibrations are amplified in the inner ear. Within your inner ear vibrations of different frequencies are "sorted out" as they stimulate different patches of receptors, which send that information to the big cheese, the brain.
             The outer ear is what most people picture when the ear is mentioned. This region of the inner ear consists of two parts. The first is the outer funnel-like structure called the auricle (pinna). The funnel like structure catches the sound waves and directs them into the second part of the external ear, the external auditory meatus or the external auditory canal.
             As the sound waves progress down the auditory canal they travel into a new region of the ear called the middle ear. Here in the middle ear the waves hit a barrier ca...