Audiology
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40 free Audiology trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hearing is one of the most delicate feats the body performs: tiny, fast changes in pressure are turned into nerve signals, and then into speech, music and warning. Audiology is the science of how that works, how it goes wrong, and what can be done about it. This quiz starts easy and gets steadily harder. It covers the anatomy of the outer, middle and inner ear, the physics of loudness and pitch, common hearing conditions, the checks used in a clinic, the history of hearing devices and a few surprising stories from the field. It suits students revising for an exam, new hearing care staff, and anyone curious about their own ears. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which stirrup-shaped bone in the middle ear is the smallest and lightest bone in the human body?
Stapes
The stapes is the last of three tiny ossicles, passing sound vibrations on to the inner ear. Its Latin name simply means stirrup.
Q 02The decibel is named after which inventor, whose mother and wife were both deaf?
Bell
Bell is honored in the bel, a unit now seldom used on its own because nearly everyone works in tenths of it. His mother's hearing loss is what first pushed him to study acoustics.
Q 03Which Vienna composer had visitors write in notebooks to hold conversations as his hearing failed?
Beethoven
Beethoven never went totally deaf: in his final years he could still pick out low tones and sudden loud sounds. His 'conversation books' are now a prized record of his life.
Q 04The cochlea, the coiled organ of hearing, takes its name from the Greek word for which animal?
Snail
Snail is the sense of the Greek kokhlias behind the name, a nod to the organ's spiral shell shape. Monotremes are the notable mammals whose cochlea is not coiled.
Q 05Audiology emerged as a profession after which war sent many veterans home with hearing loss?
World War II
World War II left so many veterans with hearing loss that a new field grew up to treat them. The words audiology and audiologist have been traced in print only as far back as 1946.
Q 06Loud noise can destroy which sensory receptors in the cochlea, because humans cannot regrow them?
Hair cells
Hair cells are named for the tufts of stereocilia on top, fifty to a hundred on each one. Because they cannot regenerate, the hearing lost with them is gone for good.
Q 07Which passage from the middle ear to the back of the nose opens during a swallow to equalize pressure?
Eustachian tube
The Eustachian tube normally stays collapsed and gapes open on a swallow, letting middle-ear pressure match the cabin air as a plane descends.
Q 08Which condition, named from the Latin for 'to ring', makes people hear sounds with no outside source?
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is usually described as ringing, but it can just as easily sound like clicking, buzzing, hissing or roaring.
Q 09Which nickname is given to an infection of the outer ear canal, often set off by trapped water?
Swimmer's ear
Swimmer's ear can also follow a shower, since water trapped in the canal is enough to start it, especially in a humid climate.
Q 10Which funnel-shaped device was the main listening aid for deaf people before electric hearing aids?
Ear trumpet
The ear trumpet has served the partially deaf since the 17th century; the first electric aid, the Akouphone, grew out of telephone technology in the 1890s.
Q 11What is the everyday name for the tympanic membrane, the thin sheet dividing the outer and middle ear?
Eardrum
The eardrum is cone-shaped rather than flat, and the way it looks through a scope can reveal diseases of the middle ear hidden behind it.
Q 12What is the medical name for earwax, which comes in genetically determined wet and dry types?
Cerumen
Cerumen of the wet type is genetically dominant, while the dry, gray and flaky type is recessive and more common in parts of East Asia.
Q 13Which part of the brain, also vital for long-term memory, houses the primary auditory cortex?
Temporal lobe
The temporal lobe carries the auditory cortex along its upper side, partly tucked inside a deep fold called the lateral sulcus.
Q 21Which handheld instrument, also called an auriscope, does a clinician use to look down the ear canal?
Otoscope
An otoscope packs a light and a magnifying lens of about three times into its head, and it can double as a viewer for the nose and upper throat.
Q 22Which tool does a clinician hold against the skull in the Rinne and Weber hearing tests?
Tuning fork
A tuning fork humming on the middle of the forehead should sound equally loud on both sides; hearing it louder in one ear is a clue to what kind of loss is present.
Q 23Which hearing pathway explains why a recording of your own voice sounds higher than you expect?
Bone conduction
Q 14Which three fluid-filled loops in the inner ear sense head rotation and help keep the body balanced?
Semicircular canals
The semicircular canals sit at right angles to one another, so between them they can pick up a turn of the head in any direction.
Q 15What is the anatomical name for the visible outer flap of the ear, from the Latin for wing?
Pinna
The pinna, also called the auricle, does more than funnel sound inward: its folds filter what arrives in a way that favors the pitches of human speech.
Q 16The commonly stated range of human hearing starts at 20 Hz and runs up to which limit?
20,000 Hz
20,000 Hz is the textbook ceiling, though people vary widely at the top end and a gradual loss of the highest pitches with age is considered normal.
Q 17Which chart of a hearing test plots the quietest sounds a person can hear at each pitch?
Audiogram
An audiogram runs pitch from left to right and loudness in decibels down the side, with a mark at the softest level the listener could detect.
Q 18What name is given to sound below 20 Hz, too low for people to hear but used by elephants and whales?
Infrasound
Infrasound lets whales keep in touch over distances of up to hundreds of miles, and people use it to monitor earthquakes and volcanoes.
Q 19Which false sensation of spinning is a hallmark of Ménière's disease, a disorder of the inner ear?
Vertigo
Vertigo traced to the inner ear or its balance nerve is called peripheral, to set it apart from the kind that starts in the brain.
Q 20What is the medical name for middle ear inflammation, a frequent cause of ear-pulling in young children?
Otitis media
Otitis media can leave fluid sitting in the middle ear for weeks or months after the infection itself has cleared, usually without any symptoms.
Bone conduction carries low pitches through the skull better than air does, so the voice you hear inside your own head is deeper and fuller than the one others hear.
Q 24What name do anatomists give the inner ear's fluid-filled network of passages and chambers?
Labyrinth
The labyrinth is named after the Minotaur's maze of Greek myth: a rigid bony shell holds a second, membranous one, surrounded by a clear fluid called perilymph.
Q 25Which fruit gives its name to the zone on a hearing test chart where the sounds of human speech fall?
Banana
Banana is the shape that speech sounds trace on the chart, and hearing loss inside that 'speech banana' is the kind that can slow a child's speech and learning.
Q 26The incus, one of the three tiny bones of the middle ear, is named for its likeness to which tool?
Anvil
Anvil is what incus means in Latin, and the bone works like one, taking vibrations from one neighbor and handing them on to the next.
Q 27What is the medical term for age-related hearing loss, which is usually most marked at higher pitches?
Presbycusis
Presbycusis joins the Greek words for old and hearing, and it creeps up on both ears at once, progressively and irreversibly.
Q 28Which type of hearing loss, by far the most common, stems from damage to the inner ear or its nerve?
Sensorineural
Sensorineural loss accounts for about 90% of reported hearing loss, with aging its most common cause and noise exposure the runner-up.
Q 29What term describes drugs, including some antibiotics and chemotherapy agents, that can damage the inner ear?
Ototoxic
Ototoxic drugs are still prescribed for very serious illnesses despite the risk, and the harm they do can be either temporary or permanent.
Q 30Which technique of pinching the nose shut and blowing out do divers and flyers use to clear their ears?
Valsalva maneuver
The Valsalva maneuver is named after Antonio Maria Valsalva, an anatomist at Bologna whose main scientific interest was the human ear.