Shortly after Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, and paralleling the development of the transistor as I have outlined before, a boy was born, a boy who loved mud, dirt and making things.
Aided by a trip to Woolworths where his father purchased battery, flashlight bulb, switch and wire, he became infatuated with all things electricity. Meanwhile, out in the world, Moore's law was making its interminable progress
As a boy he loved to take things apart to "see how they worked". Regrettably he was not equally good at reassembling them, so in consequence he amassed (and probably still does) a vast stock of bits and pieces. On one, well-remembered occasion he attempted to build a radio using these parts. The chassis was made of Meccano and there was an ear phone and a volume control somewhere in the mix, but these and many other pieces he joined together without much understanding and somewhat randomly. He reasoned that the stuff had once constituted a working radio so why not again? To his upmost disappointment it did not work. He got better at this sort of thing over time although probably still reveres the age old method of trial and error mixed with a good portion of hope which gave Edison the light bulb.
Later he was taken to an amateur showing see the Moody Science Institute Faith and Faith film "Dust or Destiny" which explored the wonders of the human body. He was, of course, fascinated, hooked, even infatuated. Then it was in 16mm acetate medium and the projector interested him almost as much as the content. Now-a-days you can watch these films on Youtube.
At that time in school biology he happened to be studying the five senses and recalls handing in some homework in which he had reproduced material from the film in graphic detail: he got full marks but also a caution about keeping to the question...
But the workings of the ear (to take one example) are indeed amazing. Here's a picture of the three bones of the inner ear, which carry out impedance matching to maximise the transfer of energy from airborne sound to vibrations in the inner ear fluid. Striking a tuning fork and then pressing its foot onto a wooden surface amplifies the sound in a similar way. All fine and dandy in theory, but if I were to design a microphone with inner workings that looked this messy I can be pretty sure it would fall on deaf ears so to speak.
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| Three tiny bones in the middle ear |
Quote: The malleus and incus are suspended by two ligaments that provide an axis of rotation so that the middle ear bones pivot when the tympanic membrane vibrates. The footplate of the stapes inserts into the oval window of the inner ear whence nerve endings detect what we perceive as sound.
Quote: The inner ear is divided into two fluid filled chambers... The fluid in the two chambers differs on the basis of the kind of salt that each contains. The fluid in the outer or bony chamber is filled with a sodium salt solution (called perilymph) that resembles the salt composition in the blood or the fluids found in the brain. The inner or membranous chamber is filled with a potassium salt solution (endolymph) that resembles the fluid that is normally found inside the cells of the body. Specialized cells that line parts of the membranous chamber and “pump” potassium into the membranous chamber maintain the difference in concentration between the two chambers. The difference in the chemical composition of these two fluids provides chemical energy (like a battery) that powers the activities of the sensory cells.
The inner ear organs must be small because any increase in their size would increase their mass... [which would] decrease the sensitivity... The mass of the cochlear sensory epithelium is further reduced because it has only a small number of blood vessels... reduced by a unique system for converting the metabolic energy from sugar and oxygen in the blood into an electrical potential... the auditory system is sensitive enough to “hear” the vibrations associated with blood moving through blood vessels. It is fortunate they are located away from the organ of Corti.
There's much more detail freely available on the internet. You can find papers that purport to explain such workings of the human body and the implied evolutionary process but they often seem to me to use highly specialised terms only to obfuscate, for example (my emphasis):
All reptiles and birds have only one middle ear ossicle [bone], the stapes or columella. How these two additional ossicles came to reside and function in the middle ear of mammals has been studied for the last 200 years and represents one of the classic example of how structures can change during evolution to function in new and novel ways. From fossil data, comparative anatomy and developmental biology it is now clear that the two new bones in the mammalian middle ear, the malleus and incus, are homologous to the quadrate and articular, which form the articulation for the upper and lower jaws in non-mammalian jawed vertebrates. The incorporation of the primary jaw joint into the mammalian middle ear was only possible due to the evolution of a new way to articulate the upper and lower jaws, with the formation of the dentary-squamosal joint, or TMJ in humans. The evolution of the three-ossicle ear in mammals is thus intricately connected with the evolution of a novel jaw joint, the two structures evolving together to create the distinctive mammalian skull.
Suffice it to say the design of the human ear is remarkable. Some would see this as evidence for an Intelligent Creator but then what or who designed the creator? By introducing God the need for intelligent design has simply been shifted. That all reptiles and birds have only one middle ear bone whilst we have three implies an evolutionary step which creationists contest. I am not endorsing either view (frankly I do not know) but I do marvel at how a bunch of bones, tissues, blood and gore could possibly detect sound with a sensitivity sensitivity close to the theoretical limit and enable us to communicate and to enjoy the emotional depths and artistry of music. Could a random assembly of electronic components ever become a first class radio receiver?
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