What is that noise you hear when you put a shell up to your ear?

Answer 1

The blood pumping through your ear. The sound is amplified and reflected back to you.

Answer 2

Noise is detected when pulses of air strike a little membrane deep within you ear causing it to vibrate. The vibration in the membrane is transformed into pulses of electricity that travel through your nerve cells and into your brain.

Even when you think you are standing in a perfectly silent room, there is actually a lot of ambient noise (weak air pulses) that your ears fail to detect because they are not energetic enough to wiggle the membrane.

When you hold a shell up to your ear it acts like a natural amplifier (in fact if you look at the inner ear it is shaped exactly like a shell and this shapre alone is capable of a 20 decibal amplification). The vibrations in the air bouncing off the shell cause traveel through the spiral of the shell towar the ear. This is because of the unique spiral shape of the shell each loop in the spiral being smaller than the previous loop—this forces the air waves to travel through smaller and smaller spaces until the air finally reaches the inner ear.

This phenomenon is similar to what happens when you see waves of water coming in to the beach. If you look far out at sea it might appear placid, with only small waves rippling across the surface; however, as the waves approach shore the water is being forced through a smaller and smaller space as some of the wave is reflected off the surrounding shoreline. This forces the amplitude of the wave to increase in order to compensate. When the wave finally gets to the shore it has increased in strength and is now packing enough punch to smash into you, and perhaps even knock you down. Inside the shell, by the time the sound winds its way around the loops, it has gained enough amplitude to wiggle the little membrane.

I see that a lot of people explain it by saying that you are hearing the blood in your ear. I am sure that this is one of the sources of ambient sound, but I don't know the exact percentage of sound that comes from blood and what comes from other sources. If you hold a stethascope up in the air you will hear a simillar background hum.

Of course my 8 year old son would disagree. Grandma told him it is the sound of the ocean that got trapped in there. I hope you find one of these versions helpfull

Answer 3

haha---forgot about this! Well, when put a shell up to my ear I hear a beautiful mermaid talking to me, asking "wanna be my merman and come live with me in the sea forever?" What? It could happen...... :))

As a kid I was told I could hear the ocean by putting it up to my ear, but later on obviously I knew better......but as an adult I find that I'm going back to thinking it's the ocean I'm hearing again......or a mermaid.

Answer 4

No. regrettably that is in hassle-free terms a organic amplifier to the encompassing noise being performed back. the way it works is there are a number of many many turns and bends in a sea shell. The sounds from exterior enter and circulate around and around in there and are echoed back in a muffled state, sounding like waves. it quite is all.

Answer 5

I think it is all the sound in the area echo in the shell. They echo so much that it seems to sound like the ocean.

Answer 6

Alien slime creatures slithering down your ear canal to take over your body...

Answer 7

The ocean.

Answer 8

The sound of the sea is imprinted in the shell.

Answer 9

Your blood as it passes through the carotid arteries.

Answer 10

Its the blood pumping in your head