Letting down your hair

You’re probably familiar with the Grimm’s fairy tale about Rapunzel, a young maid
who was put into a high tower when she was a girl. One day, a prince heard her
crying and was smitten by her beauty and her long blonde braided hair. When he
couldn’t find a door into the tower to rescue her, he asked that she let down her
golden hair so he could climb up and rescue her. The beautiful Rapunzel let her hair
hang over the edge of the tower, and the prince scurried up to her rescue. After
some harrowing events, they lived happily ever after.
It’s a good story but, notwithstanding freakish exceptions (the current world record
hair length is more than 18 feet), clearly the Brothers Grimm weren’t well-versed in
the biology of normal hair growth. They couldn’t have known that the longest growth
phase of hair is growth was six or seven years, making Rapunzel’s hair a maximum
of about 1 meter in length (that’s six or seven years at
1
⁄2 inch per month). Certainly,
Rapunzel could have jumped from a height of 1 meter, but if she had, the Brothers
Grimm wouldn’t have had much of a story for the millions of children who wanted
to believe in the magic of the prince who rescues the fair maid. Ignorance is bliss!