The acoustic significance of human age-dependant ear growth

In daily life many of us has seen old people - especially males - that seems to have very large ears. From time to time it raises a public debate as to whether these ears are actually grown larger with age, or whether it is only a visual appearance due to shrinkage of the surrounding facial tissue. There is well established evidence from medical literature that the ears of people are getting larger with age (an increased ear-length for males of approximately 1 cm from the 18th to the 70th year of living). This has led to the question in medical journals as to whether an increased ear size can counterbalance an age dependant hearing loss. This project investigates that hypothesis on the basis of acoustical transfer characteristics measured on 2 different aged groups of people (20 to 25 and 56 to 70 years).