How do the circular canals in our ears help us balance?
478679
Fluid inside the canals actually keeps your equilibrium in check. It is the equal amount of fluid which is sensed by your nervous system that tells your brain you're balanced, you're off balance, you're sideways, you're upside down, and all that jazz. Pretty nifty, huh? Over the years fluid starts to break down, but that my cyber-questioner is whole other question!
193823
it is the auditory nerve..sound waves enter into the ear canal, travel to the eardrum (considered the outer ear) next the eardrum vibrates and causes the stirrup, anvil and hammer to move, (this is part of the middle ear along with the eustation tubes that provide drainage route and assist with keeping correct pressure in the ears). Next the waves move into the inner ear which consists of the cochlea or labrynth (which controls balance and is what is effected when you feel dizzy)the semicircular canals, and finally the auditory nerve which conducts the code to the brain.
578403
THe majority if it is in the semicircular canals; a little bit of it is in a small area attached to them.\n\nBalance, however, is sensed by hairlike projections INTO the fluid that does the sensing, as the fluid's intertia causes it to "flow" when the head moves...\n\nThe semicircular canals are close to the cochlea, by the way...
96895
Yes, no and yes.\nThe hearing part is really sensing vibrations, but they don't ACTUALLY hear.
587564
An infection of the inner ear, in a single ear as distinct from both at the same time, can be a very frightening experience.  Because it contains the balance fluid, you are inclined to fall around in circles especially when you get out of bed.  When I had it the first time, I honestly thought I was having a stroke or something similar.  However, a few tablets from the doctor cured it within a couple of days.
485213
they help support your head
287106
DEFENSE MECHANISM FOR THE EAR.  TRAPS DIRT.  PROTECTS OUR HEARING
843134
Sound can affect the body in many ways.  The most common form is deafness, where the cilia in the ears are flattened and cannot transmit the vibrations to nerves.  The cilia are like hairs and vibrate with the vibrations created by the noise.  The vibrations pass through the air and are picked up by the cilia and passed onto the brain for processing.  This is a simple explanation as explained to me by a doctor.\nNoise, and over pressure from such sources as an explosion, can burst the eardrum.  The eardrum vibrates and excites the cilia,  So if the eardrum is burst or the cilia are flat, deafness occurs.\nHearing ringing noises in the ears is tinnitus and is a hearing defect created by noise and in some cases diseases.\nVery low noise, on the Hertz scale, can cause the body to evacuate it contents, both front and rear end.  Higher frequency noise can cause bleeding internally.  The military have been experimenting with sonic weapons since before the Second World War.\nSubliminal suggestion by playing sounds behind sounds has been banned from advertising.  Suggesting that you buy something while listening to an ad that tells you how much a company pays to a charity would really work in your head.\nOther than that, try sleeping next to a railway line that operates with trains every 5 minutes during the time you should normally be asleep!.  You would be absolutely tired by the end of the week.
68521
spinning creates an imbalance in the fluid in your inner ear thus making you dizzy.
1003045
The exact thing happened to my Mom.  First, they diagnosed her with Vertigo.  However, it turned out that she has hypoglycemia (the opposite of diabetes).  Balance tends to be based on the inner ear so, if it's an ear infection your doctor will spot it.  However, if not it can be tricky to diagnose.  http://www.vitacost.com/science/hn/Concern/Hypoglycemia.htm \nThis webiste will help you determine if it is hypoglycemia.  If you've been eating/drinking a lot more sugar than usual than I would lean towards hypoglycemia.  Either way you need to seek professional help.
377084
It will not stop your ears from feeling like they go *pop*.  The "pop" is a good thing!  (Are you asking about how to prevent bursting of eardrums?)\n\nYou need to open the Eustacian tubes, that link your inner ears to your oral cavity.  I can do this at will, by using throat / tongue muscles, but many people cannot.\n\nChewing / swallowing usually helps people to achieve this.  Thus, the pressure is equalised between the inner ear and the atmosphere, and pain is prevented or relieved.\n\nFor babies in planes, it helps to get them to suck milk, from a bottle or from a breast, as they cannot be given chewing gum.
1149316
The size of the external ear has nothing to do with the amount of fluid and efficiency of the inner ear which is safely out of sight. It is the inner ear which is important in balance\n\nThe amount of fluid in the inner ear does not decide which person has the better balance either, the situation is far more complex.
843674
I don't know, I once read an article about human parts that are now useless, but at one time they were useful. This article said that humans used to be able to control their ears similar to alot of animals, like cats for example, to distinguish more clearly the direction from which a sound came.
804222
Humans are symmetrical organisms. Cranial nerves are paired to provide innervation for the left and right.
1138418
It's hard to answer a question like that, because there are more than two kinds of hearing aid.\n\nHearing aids are available as completely in the canal (CIC - the smallest kind), In The Canal (ITC) and In The Ear (ITE - the largest in the ear kind).  There are also some in between sizes such as half shell and mostly in the canal designs.  Then there are post aural hearing aids called Behind The Ear where the hearing aid hooks over the ear and an ear mold sits in the ear.  There are also the vary rare bone conduction aids, spectacle aids and body aids, all of which are almost obsolete these days.\n\nAs well as styles of hearing aid the other distinction is analogue and digital.  Analogue hearing aids simply take all sound and make it louder with a basic bias towards the kind of hearing loss a patient has.  Digital hearing aids, depending on how sophisticated they are, process the sound digitally allowing significantly more sound manipulation resulting in a clearer more natural sound that works better in a variety of listening situations.\n\nHopefully that answers your question.
1169047
good grief - there is a lot of 'part' knowledge here...\n\nyou need to break this down and talk about the different parts of what the original question was asking.\n\nif it was 'see', the explanation would be the same as for hearing by the way. (it would be easier to explain about seeing)\n\nhere goes...\n\ninside your ear you have these little hairs (cillia) that are a certain distance apart. when a sound wave enters the ear the wavelength of this wave will stimulate hairs at both its high energy points (its troughs or peaks, you choose, not important) your brain knows the distance of the hairs and so can interprut this wave distance between two lots of hairs being stimulated. thats how you get the frequency (number of wavelengths in a second) of sound in your ear. the volume (loudness) depends on how vigourously the hairs are moved by the sound wave. (thats why you can go deaf listening to loud music - you kill those little hairs if too loud). \n\nnotice i said sound!\n\nyour question is about electromagnetic waves. radio waves and visible light (green) waves are both of the same stuff (light energy - some we can see and some we cannot). the organ for detecting this energy is the eye. inside the eye, the retina (back of the eye) has special cells called rods and cones for detecting different wavelengths (i believe this is what your engineer was on about). each of these cells has a specific chemical for detecting a certain wavelength. lets pick on one.\n\nthe red light cone has a protein inside that has a special part that can move to a slightly higher energy form (a more awkward position for the proten so it wants to get back to where it was before - think of bending a ruler... the more you bend it, the more it wants to get back to where it was... so the higher the energy it has) when red light is shone on that protein (inside the eye) it provides enough energy to move this extra part of the protein (called an apoprotein portion is anyone wants to know) to a higher energy state and this is enough to induce (make happen) a signal being sent to the brain that says 'red light detected' and we see red light.\n\na similar thing happens to green light.\n\nin physics, when we talk of waves whether in music or lihgth or nanometers, if you have something of the same wavelength then it is detected as the same.\n\nif you have something of a different wavelngth then it is detect as different ( or in the case of the eye.. or even the ear, not detected at all, unless your are green, red or blue light)\n\nbut if you have a wavelength that is say  x2 bigger, of x3 or x6 or x2000 times bigger exactly, with no extra and no bits needed.. it has to be exact. then these also will be detected.. A BIT. we call thesse harmonics. this is a word that belongs to music.\n\never notice the way a piano has all those notes (only 8 notes and yet so many keys..?) these eight notes are repeated but in higher registers/keys, but they are still the same note.... a higher harmonic. all these wavelenths are doubled or trippled or what ever.\n\nso, because there will be a harmonic of green light in the radiowave part of the spectrum... it can theoretically be detected. so you could theoretically detect green light (with the eye) and radiowaves (theoretically with the eye)... but never with the ear :-)\n\nhappy days - now lets look at information theory! why do we always lose information and yet still maintain the integroty of the message? at what point is the message lost?
135640
Vibrations in air --> external auditory meatus (duct) lets vibrating air pass --> tympanic membrane vibrates --> hammer (malleus) moves --> anvil (incus) moves --> stirrup (stapes) moves --> oval fenestra (opening into inner ear)--> endolymphatic fluid vibrates --> three parallel ducts that form the cochlea: vibrations travel through vestibular channel --> apex --> tympanic channel (vestibular and tympanic channel surround the cochlear channel or Corti organ) --> membrane of round window vibrates. \nVibrations stimulate different parts of the Organ of Corti --> Auditory nerve (VII cranial nerve pair) --> medulla oblonga at the base of the brain. \n\nConfused? Try reading this while watching these:\nMammalian ear (from the BBC, with great animations)\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/hearing/hearing.shtml\nInner ear\nhttp://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mario/npr/courses/cpsc601/homeworks/ear.jpg\nhttp://www.wadalab.mech.tohoku.ac.jp/images/inner_ear2.jpg