while its obviously true that we only have two of them, it's not true that we can't use them to hear height or depth or distance information. but if it happens in the open, we can directionalise by identifying the patch of skin that we felt the sound on (usually chest, back, shoulder or upper arm), and a perpendicular line from that "impact" patch then points to the sound-source.įor loud low-frequency sounds, we can also feel sounds through the pressure-sensors in our joints.īut back to the ears. It's difficult to locate the direction of a backfiring car when it happens in the street (because the sound often reflects off buildings before it reaches us). It's wrong, of course: Physics people often suck at biology, and (non-physicist) humans are actually pretty good at pinpointing the direction of sound-sources, without having to tilt our heads like sparrows, or do any other special location-finding moves.Īnd we don't just perceive sound with our ears. One of the dafter things they teach in physics classes is that because humans only have two ears, we can only hear location by comparing the loudnesses of a sound in both ears, and that because of this we can only hear "lefty-rightiness", unless we start tilting our heads.
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