With the development of adhesives that stick nicely to flesh, some ambitious or malevolent soul ought to be able to glue a small iron filing onto each of your eardrums. Replace your headphones with a pair of tastefully-designed coils and, hey presto, your eardrums become speaker cones and you have your very own built-in sound system. Only you would hear the music (eliminating the irritating tssk- tssk---tssk from conventional headphones) - unless you cranked the volume up high (in which case you could achieve the impressive effect of having Kylie Minogueue coming out of your ears).
-- Basepair, Jan 20 2005

Basepair, you fool! You'd need to keep the coils in a fixed position relative to your eardrums or the sound would get all distorted!
-- Basepair, Jan 20 2005


Good point. It may be necessary to implant the coils in the fleshy bit of the ear. Thanks for pointing that out.
-- Basepair, Jan 20 2005


So the fleshy part of the ear serves as the speaker cone?

Could your original idea be used to help people suffering from hardening of the eardrum? (if such a thing exists)
-- robinism, Jan 22 2005


Robinism - no, the plan was that the eardrum acts as the cone (I guess speakers generally have a fixed magnet and have the coil on the cone, but it seemed easier the other way round). I don't know about hardening of the eardrum, but you'd probably experience some interesting bass if you walked too close to an overhead powerline....
-- Basepair, Jan 22 2005


That or you'd die.
-- pooduck, Jan 22 2005



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