Well DUH!

I just ran the experiment and unless our chemist is kidding me, I could tell elevation. Here's what I did.

I walked into his office and explained the discussion. I told him that when I closed my eyes I wanted him to click his fingers somewhere along a vertical axis in front of me at some distance and that I'd point to where I thought it was coming from (angle up or down).

He said I got all positions right. This suggests that something else about our ears gives us clues to elevation.

My impression was that the higher position clicks sounded like higher pitch frequencies and the lower ones. It may be something to do with the formation of the ear lobe as the previous poster suggested.

Its possible the office acoustics had some affect.

Its a simple experiment. Try it.

-Jay C. Box

PS. We just repeated the experiment in another location to confirm it before posting and we had an interesting new data point.

Everything worked as before but he placed his hand very close to the ceiling and while I could detect the elevation correctly, I could tell that it had a lower tone like I was hearing near the floor - probably having to do with the bounce path off the ceiling and floor that made it sound lower pitch.

Interesting...