eli5: Why do your ears ring after a really loud sound (like a grenade going off too close to you)?
In: Biology
In your ear you have hair follicles of different length connected to nerves. These hairs vibrate at different resonant frequencies and triggers the nerves which sends a signal to your brain. They vibrate due to sound at that frequency. This is how your hearing works.
When you get a loud noise these hairs will brake off. The smallest ones which swings at the highest frequencies will brake first. When a nerve is no longer connected to its hair it will send a continuous signal to your brain. This is what causes the loud high pitch ringing noise.
After some time your brain notice that something is wrong and starts to ignore the signal. So you perceive the sound as disappearing. But in fact the ringing noise is with you for the rest of your life, your brain just gets good at ignoring it. And of course you become deaf to these frequencies.
Inside your ear’s sound detector (the cochlea) there are these tiny hairs. The moving liquid bends the hairs and nerves detect this and your brain interprets that as “sound”.
Tinnitus, ringing in the ears, can be a symptom of several problems, but it can be directly caused by too loud a sound. The hair-to-nerve connection is damaged and becomes inflamed. Small damage can be repaired by the body, severe damage can be permanent. That’s why soldiers, shooters, and people likely to be exposed to loud sounds wear hearing protection.
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