the.com/eardrum
a membrane thinner than paper that turns air pressure into your entire reality of sound
means The thin membrane stretched across the inner end of your ear canal that vibrates when sound waves hit it, passing those vibrations onward to be heard.
from A plain compound of "ear" and "drum" — the word does exactly what it says, naming the membrane after the instrument it resembles, a taut skin stretched over a frame that throbs when struck. "Ear" goes back through Old English "ēare" to Proto-Germanic roots shared across many languages; "drum" is a later word, likely imitative of the sound a drum makes, and the two were joined to give an everyday name to the medical "tympanic membrane" — "tympanum" itself being the Latin and Greek word for a drum.
- thickness
- about a tenth of a millimeter thin
- motion
- vibrates billions of times over a lifetime
- sensitivity
- detects movements smaller than a hydrogen atom
- self-repair
- small tears often heal within weeks unaided
- name
- officially called the tympanic membrane
barotrauma eardrum ruptures — scuba divers experience tympanic membrane rupture at depth changes, common diving injury