system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do sounds outside of the human range of hearing not damage our ears? When a speaker plays an 18 kHz tone at a loud volume level it hurts to listen to, however, if you change the pitch to say 30 KHz it’s as if nothing was being played. Why is this?

I know the air is still vibrating with the same power as before, but for some reason the pressure on the ear goes away.
gpt
AFAIK this only is the case with ultrasound frequencies. High power, low frequency waves (eg shock waves from an explosion) can still damage your ears, even rupturing your eardrums.

As to why ultrasound doesn’t cause harm: the frequency is too high for our eardrums to react to: they won’t move together with the wave, and because they don’t move nothing in the ear is affected.