← 🫀 Human body · usually met in Std 6-10
A funnel, a drum, three small bones and a fluid-filled spiral that turns vibration into nerve signals — and a separate organ for balance sharing the same space.
Sound is gathered by the outer ear and vibrates the eardrum. Three tiny bones — the smallest in the body — pass that vibration to the cochlea, a fluid-filled spiral lined with hair cells. Different places along the spiral respond to different frequencies, so pitch becomes position, and the hair cells convert the movement into nerve impulses.
The semicircular canals sit alongside, filled with fluid that lags when you turn, which is how the body knows which way up it is and which way it is moving. That shared address is why an ear infection can make you dizzy, and why spinning leaves you unsteady after you stop: the fluid keeps moving for a moment after you do not.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “The ear” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus. World Health Organization ↗Health facts stated carefully, and updated when the evidence changes.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
Ask GuruAcharya Samayeshwar
