hypotheses regarding human headshape and hat shapes

spurt!!! Oh, my goodness, you and Cea are cooking today, Joanne!

Karen Maslowski in Ohio

Pogonip wrote:

Reading this thread gives plenty of evidence of the density of the
aforementioned head.

In article , Karen Maslowski
writes

While I don't know how much YOUR head weighs, I've read that the average
head weighs 8 pounds, or roughly the same amount as a gallon of milk (or
anything else, for that matter).

A gallon of molten lead? :-)

Karen Maslowski in Ohio

Bob Harris wrote:

While we're at it, I've often wondered how much a head weighs. How can I
weigh my own head? Seriously.

Bob H

--
Neil Fernandez

In article , Elizabeth
Young writes

Neil Fernandez wrote:
Hypotheses:

- human head shape, in a horizontal plane just above the ears, is
approximately the shape made by joining a semicircle with a
semi-ellipse, where the ellipse has eccentricity 1/sqrt(2)

- hat ovals are ellipses with eccentricity 0.5

I'd be grateful for any help with this.

Neil

Hats - like a Stetson, for instance - come not only in sizes like 7 3/8
but also designations like 'Long Oval'. My father, grandfather and I all
wear long oval hats (when I bother to wear a hat that is sufficiently
sturdy to retain the shape). If I wear a hat that is not a 'long oval'
then the hat - although the right size - pinches my head front and back
and gaps at the sides.
I do not know how the 'long oval' issue would affect your hypotheses.

Interesting. I hadn't heard of long hat ovals before. Maybe the
eccentricity of the ellipses for you and your father etc. is relatively
large. I was only suggesting 1/sqrt(2) as an average! :-)

I also suspect that the standard hat oval could usefully be
reengineered, since it doesn't correspond to the shape of most people's
heads, tending to grip - if not pinch - more at the front and back than
at the sides. I guess this might be good for some hats but not all.

Neil

--
Neil Fernandez

In article .com, Ray
Koopman writes

Neil Fernandez wrote:
I was hoping to get some knowledge from others who have previously
thought about head shape [...]

Google for "cephalic index".

Thanks Ray!

My hypothesis would give an average cephalic index of
(2/(1+sqrt(2)))*100 = 82.8. I'm not sure whether I would be measuring in
exactly the same place though.

Thanks again.

Neil

--
Neil Fernandez

It was somewhere outside Barstow when Neil Fernandez
wrote:

Interesting. I hadn't heard of long hat ovals before.

Motorbike helmets (which are cheap) are sized on a simple linear
scale. Flying helmets (which are expensive and complicated) have an
eccentricity measure too.

Surely some 19th century text on physiognomy (sp?) is in order ?