School › Ears
How ears work
How a shake in the air becomes a signal in your brain, why two ears are better than one, how ears help with balance, and how to look after your hearing. Three ages, each with a text, an experiment, a game, a quiz, a printable worksheet and a teacher sheet.
Ages 6–7How do our ears hear?Ears catch sounds and send them to your brain. Follow a sound into your ear, make your own big ears, and learn how to look after them.Ages 10–11Ears: from a vibration to a signal in the brainFollow a sound through the outer, middle and inner ear, find out how two ears tell you where a sound comes from, and test it in a fair experiment.Ages 15–16Hearing: transduction, timing and noise doseHow the cochlea sorts frequencies, how hair cells turn movement into nerve signals, how the brain uses microsecond timing to locate sounds, and what noise exposure does. With a school noise survey.