Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: where smart happens him Marshall Brain was today's question, Why
Speaker 1: do your ears pop when you dive in the deep
Speaker 1: end of the pool. If you've ever struck your finger
Speaker 1: into your ear, you know about the ear canal. Your
Speaker 1: ear canal is a tube, and at the end of
Speaker 1: the tube is the ear drum, a thin piece of
Speaker 1: skin stretched tight like a drum over the end of
Speaker 1: the ear canal. You've probably read on a box of
Speaker 1: cotton swabs or heard from your mother that you should
Speaker 1: never stick anything in your ear. What you want to
Speaker 1: avoid is sticking something in that could puncture the ear drum.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the ear drum is a
Speaker 1: hollow space filled with air called the middle ear. What
Speaker 1: you want is for the air in your ear canal
Speaker 1: and the air in the middle ear to have the
Speaker 1: same pressure. If they do, then the ear drum has
Speaker 1: equal pressure on both sides and it is smooth and happy.
Speaker 1: In order for the middle ear to equalize its pressure,
Speaker 1: there's a thin tube called the us Nation tube that
Speaker 1: connects the middle ears air chamber to the throat. Air
Speaker 1: can flow back and forth through this tube, and it
Speaker 1: keeps the air pressure in the middle ear equal with
Speaker 1: the outside air pressure. When you swim in deep water,
Speaker 1: there can be a lot of water pressure. If you're
Speaker 1: you station tube is clogged or narrowed for any reason,
Speaker 1: then your middle ear gets shut off and it becomes
Speaker 1: a closed chamber. It holds air at normal pressure, like
Speaker 1: fourteen point seven p s i. When you swim to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the deep end, the water is pressing
Speaker 1: into the ear canal at about nineteen p s i,
Speaker 1: so the ear drum bows inward because of the pressure difference.
Speaker 1: Since the ear drum is full of nerves, you feel
Speaker 1: this bowing as pain. To solve the problem, you can
Speaker 1: equalize the pressure. When you start to feel pain in
Speaker 1: your ears, hold your nose shut with your fingers and
Speaker 1: blow into your nose. You'll hear your ears pop and
Speaker 1: the pain should go away. By blowing, you increase the
Speaker 1: air pressure and your lungs and throat and it blows
Speaker 1: the air up your station tube into the middle ear
Speaker 1: to equalize the pressure. When you rise back up to
Speaker 1: the surface, the middle ear will contain excess pressure, but
Speaker 1: the US station to generally releases it automatically. If not,
Speaker 1: try yawning to open it up, or chewing gum or
Speaker 1: something that will cause the U station tube deflex and open.
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