new thread
I was wondering if anyone knew whether how coarse your hair is can limit how thick it is (i.e. the diameter of the strands vs the number of strands)?
I've always thought I've had thick hair, but it turns out my hair is VERY coarse, but not too thick.. does it make sense that if the strands are thicker, each strand will take up more space on the scalp and hence there will be less hairs? Or doesn't hair work this way?
Coarser hair usually numbers fewer. I have about 100,000 hairs on my scalp (last time I checked anyway). My daughter has about 250,000. Her hair is finer than mine, but she makes up for it in number of hairs so that she actually has a thicker ponytail.
How did you manage to count all those strands???
Didn't count them all. We approximated, knowing that 2 to the 10th power is about 1000 (1024 to be exact). Given that fact, just take a pony tail and divide it in half. Take one half and divide it in half. Keep doing this until you've divided in half 10 times. Now you're holding about 1/1000 of your hair. Count those strands, then multiply by 1000 to get the total.
Since eyeballing halves like this introduces some error, we repeated a couple of times. But each time resulted in the same number within about 15% if I recall correctly.
Gee, I would have never thought of doing that! Thanx.
Guess the saying is true: We do learn something NEW every day.
You have a really cool method for getting a close estimate of total hair count. You are only counting ponytail hair (not all strands reach the ponytail) so you may want to add perhaps 10 percent to that value which would be about 275000. I had no idea that a person could have that many hair strands, I thought the upper limit was maybe 175000 for very fine thick hair. Absalom
I had a method of extrapolating to the roots, too, but I didn't apply it to my daughter. I think she's one of the rare breed who doesn't have many short hair strands. Of course that implies she could grow her hair very long. I really hope she does. She's had it to the tops of her thighs before, but now it's just past her shoulders, and she's growing it out again.
Again, your hair counting method is a stroke of pure genius. Out of curiousity what is the upper end limit for hair strand count on a person with extremely fine extra thick hair? 250000 is an incredibly high number of strands, and I did not know it could go that high. Can it reach 300000 or even 400000 in the most extreme cases? I thought everyone had between 50000 and 150000 strands and until today, I had no idea that the number can go much higher. I am going to use your hair counting method to find out how many hair strands I have. I will probably multiply the result by about 1.15 since I have a lot of short flyaways that do not reach the pony tie. Absalom
I have no idea what the maximum is.
Are you Victor Engle (vector angle)?
Ingenious method, I'm impressed! (I love mathematics)
Yes, although my last name is spelled Engel.
Excellent idea. I divided my ponytail 12 times and calculated 57,344 hairs. Because the closest I could reach part of my ponytail is about a foot from my head, and the ponytail gets smaller if I count at a location further from my head, I figure the total hairs including those shorter than 1 foot probably make it about 75 to 100 thousand hairs.
Wow, never thought of doing that lol, i'll do that when I've got a lot of patience.
Victor,
Do you have any photos of your daughter's hair?
These were taken a few years ago.
Your daughter has exceptionally nice (and long!) hair.
What does she think of you having long hair may I ask, does she completely support you, does she think it's cool?
It's just below her shoulders now. The pictures I showed were taken a few years ago. She'll be 16 in April.
When we walk together, she hates it when it wafts into her face. When we're watching a movie together, she doesn't like it when it invades her space. But other than that, it's just me. I am how she knows me, and she thinks it would be weird if I were to cut it off.
She enjoys telling her friends that she rides home with Jesus, and yes, my own daughter refers to me as Jesus with her friends. She calls me Daddy, though.
Thickness of hair is used to describe the total volume of hair you have and coarseness refers to the diameter of the hair shafts themselves. Think of thickness as density of hair. If you have very coarse hair but is of average thickness you probably have about 50000 strands of hair on your head. At the other end of the spectrum is fine thick hair with possibly over 150000 total hair strands on one head. The average person with medium hair and of medium thickness has about 100000 strands of hair on their head for comparison. I hope this answers your question. Absalom