Thursday, March 8, 2012

studying human hair

Our human body unit continues today with hair.  Straight, curly, blonde or dark hair is determined by genetics.  The shape of the hair follicle determines whether our hair will be straight or curly.  Round follicles make straight hair, flat follicles grow flat hair which is curly.  We have more than 100,000 hairs on our heads.  It is in all stages of growth as some is always falling out and being replaced by new growth.  After reading about hair we looked at a hair under the microscope.  John thought it hurt a lot to have a hair pulled out but he liked seeing it under the microscope.  
















We looked at John's hair under different magnifications.  It looked a little like this magnified photo I found on the internet but ours looked clear almost see-through.  It also had some rough places along the edges.                                                                                                    

A microscope image of a human hair

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