Another explanation was given that the ocean sound is caused by air that flows through the shell. When you place the shell a little further from your ear, the sound increases than when the shell is tightly pressed against your ear .
The sound is heard because ocean movements are similar to airflow . The seashell captures the noise around you and makes it resonate inside it. The resonance is made possible by the shell’s hard inner walls which are curved on which the noise bounces off. The resonance, in turn, produces the ocean sound.
After all, if you happen to be at the beach when you put a shell to your ear, the ambient sounds you hear will include at least some ocean noise .
Why does it sound like the ocean in a seashell?
The unique shape of seashells amplifies the ambient sound, which means that any air that makes its way through the seashell produces sound when bounced about in the curved inner surface. The sound that is produced sounds ocean-like but isn’t .
As lovely as that concept might be, though, it’s only a metaphor: When you listen to a shell, you’re not really hearing the sound of the ocean. The shape of seashells just happens to make them great amplifiers of ambient noise . Any air that makes its way into a shell’s cavity gets bounced around by its hard,.
One of the next things we wondered was why does the ocean sound like it does?
The ocean sound you hear is actually is made by the noise that is present in the environment around you thanks to physics. This noise, in turn, resonates with the shell’s cavity.
In truth, however, the sound you hear is not the ocean. Another explanation trying to explain this is that the sound is made by blood which makes an echo sound as it rushes in your ears’ blood vessels.
Why do we hear sound through a shell?
The answer is that you are hearing the local noises already around you, but altered by the shell — thanks to some clever physics. One popular (but wrong) explanation is that you are listening to your own blood coursing through you.
Others say that the whooshing sound inside the shell is generated by air flowing through the shell – air flowing through the shell and out creates a noise. You’ll notice that the sound is louder when you lift the shell slightly away from your ear than it is when the shell is right against your head.