eli5: Why do our ears pop when we change altitude? And if it’s pressure, why do they do it in pressurised plane cabins?
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>Why do our ears pop when we change altitude?
Our ear drums are extremely sensitive to air pressure they can detect a difference in pressure less than 1/10,000th of a pound per square inch and they have two sides.
One side is exposed to the outside air and the other is exposed to the air inside of our heads.
The air inside our heads is stuck in there unless we actively choose to open our eustachian tubes (yawning ect.).
This is useful because if sounds could get into our heads and change the pressure inside of them our ear drums wouldn’t flex when those pressure waves move around us.
>why do they do it in pressurised plane cabins?
Airplane cabins are pressurized to ~8,000ft so the pressure changes until you rise to ~8,000ft then it stops increasing until you descend below ~8,000ft.
Since we already discussed why pressure matters to the ear, I hope that you can see why airplane cabins changing pressure would cause problems with that system.
*I live 5,500ft above sea level and I only ever feel my ears pop when my outbound plane is landing near the coast so I’ve actually experienced this in practice, going 3,000 or so feet up doesn’t make my ears pop, it’s only the 8,000ft down that makes me want to pop my ears.
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