Today I picked up a single hair from my chair and started looking at it.  Have you ever thought about what your hair has been through?

It is 31" long.  It is silver at the end, blonde at the root (figure THAT one out).  It is very thin on the end, but thicker and more course at the root.  It has a bit of a natural wave to it.  It is strong enough to handle some tugging and stretching. It has no splits, no bumps or other irregularities.

Estimating 1/2" of growth a month (a bit more than I usually get), the tip of the hair would be a bit over 5 years old.  5 years ago I was just starting to bike.  My son was just graduating from high school.  I was many pounds lighter.  Hubby and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.  

Over the course of 5 years, it would have been washed over 800 times.  Braided 1825 times at night.  Put in a bun at least 900 times (if you count only once a day!).  French braided about 300 times.  Dried with a hair dryer maybe once.

This one little hair has been through a lot!  It is amazing it hung on as long as it did.  It may have been trimmed a few times (but not many).

Although we think of hair as fragile, it actually has to be pretty sturdy and strong to survive all that we do to it.  If we just give hair a chance, it can survive to a long, beautiful thread.

How inspiring, bikerbraid.  :) Makes me wonder just how much my hairs have been through...my hair's about the same length; unfortunately I've been so sporadic with my care of it over the last five years (and even in just the last year) that I couldn't make any sort of estimates. It is pretty impressive, though, just how resilient hair is.

I heard somewhere along the way that a single strand of hair is stronger than a strand of steel the same thickness.  Never verified it as being true, anyone know for sure?

Quote:

Hair strength For a healthy individual with no hair diseases, hair fiber is very strong with tensile strength around 1.6 x10-9 N / m2 (times ten to the power minus nine newtons per meter square of hair cross section diameter). That makes hair about as strong as copper wire of the same diameter. So as you can see hair is incredibly strong. It also has elastic properties. It can stretch up to 20% of its original length before breaking when it is dry and when it is wet it may stretch up to 50% before breaking. So how does hair break if it is so strong? It depends on the speed at which the pulling force is applied to the hair. If you pull on hair slowly and steadily with gradual increasing force the hair will resist for quite some time before breaking. But if you apply sudden force and yank on the hair it will break. The tensile strength of the hair is reduced, the hair has no time to respond and stretch, which distributes the force over the length of the hair fiber, and the hair just snaps. So despite the apparent strength of hair, it will break if you brush or comb too vigorously because this applies a sudden force to the hair.

 
source:  Keratin.com

When I was younger and had mid-thigh length hair, my brothers used to tell me that one strand of hair can pull a train. They wanted to experiment with mine  ;D

I tease my friend's sons (7 and 9) by telling them that there is one special hair on the top of your head, and if you pull it straight up it will make your mouth open all by itself (think marionettes).

I have had many amusing hours watching them surreptitiously trying to find that magic hair ;-)

/Kate