Human hair (Width)
70 µm
Shaft diameter
A strand of scalp hair, measured across. 60 to 80 µm thick.
Published
How big is that?
70 µm is 9.1 times a red blood cell and 0.98% of a grain of rice.
Human hair is the 9th smallest of the 32 Tiny Worlds objects, and the 9th smallest of the 172 objects across all five SizeItUp games.
Size comparison
To scale, smallest to largest: Human hair in orange beside the Tiny Worlds objects nearest in size, in teal.
| Object | Size | vs Human hair |
|---|---|---|
| Giardia (Trophozoite)The single-celled gut parasite whose two nuclei look like eyes. | 15 µm long | 21% of the size |
| Pollen grain (Opium poppy)A single grain of poppy pollen, with its three furrows. | 30.2 µm across | 43% of the size |
| Human hair (Width) | 70 µm across | – |
| Human egg cellThe largest cell in the human body, at ovulation. | 0.115 mm across | 1.6× bigger |
| Paramecium (P. caudatum)A slipper-shaped single cell that swims with thousands of tiny hairs. | 0.225 mm long | 3.2× bigger |
In other units
| Micrometres | 70 |
|---|---|
| Millimetres | 0.07 |
| Metres | 0.00007 |
How it's measured
Shaft diameter. Midpoint of 60 to 80 µm (Wolfram 2003, via Harvard BioNumbers).
The source gives a range, so this is the middle of it.
Sources
- bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu: BioNumbers 114258, quoting Wolfram 2003 (J Am Acad Dermatol): scalp hair is a fiber 60 to 80 μm in diameter.
Checked against the source on .
Could you have guessed it by eye?
Human hair is one of the objects in Tiny Worlds, a daily size comparison game: you stretch a shape to the size you think is right beside one you know.