Hand vs.

Height

Introduction

            We are doing this experiment to see if there is a relationship between hand size and body height.

We are trying to learn if a person is taller will they have bigger hands and the other way around too. What

made us first think about this question was when we started a discussion about branch of anthropology

that measures the size, dimensions and proportions of the human body. This is called anthropometry.

Others simply call it body proportions. We started asking question such as is the size of your forearm is

the same size as your foot? Or is the size of your fist equal to the size of your heart? This is how we

started to think of these.

 
Question
            The question is if the size of your hand has a direct relation, indirect relation, or no relation to your
body size.
 
Hypothesis
I think that yes there will be a correlation between the size of a person’s hand and their height.
 
Materials List
 Meter Stick or equivalent
 Ruler with Metrics Units
 Graph Paper
 Colored Pencils
 2 sharpen Pencils with a eraser on top
 Colored Pencils
 Line pieces of papers

 
 Procedure

1. Make details observation of your right hand, such as size, skin tone, fingers, hair, and any
kinds of marks.
2. Make a detailed drawing of your hand from your observation. Draw on the sheet of paper
provided on the next page of your packet.
3. Using your left hand, take a sharpen pencil with the eraser on top. Turn the packet to the
second page with your right hand.
4. Place right hand palm facing down on the drawing box. Spread right hand’s fingers at least
one inch apart. Trace your right hand with your left hand that is holding the pencil. Start from
the wrist all the way around the fingers and to the other side of your wrist.
5. Lift your right hand away from the paper. There should be five fingers, your thumb, index,
middle, forth, and pinky. Switching the pencil to the right hand, draw your observation of your
right hand on the picture.
6. Record short observation notes on the skinny side of the second piece of paper that says
Observation. Record at least ten short observations.
7. Measure you right hand with the metric units, which is centimeter.
8. Place your pencil in your right hand on the table. Lift your right hand showing palm facing up.
9. Using a ruler, the left hand should place the ruler on top of the right hand. Have zero
centimeters located on the wrist and 30 cm on the other side, the end.
10. Measuring with starting zero from the base of the palm to the longest fingertip. Record your
hand size on the line provided of your packet.
11. Measure the height with a meter stick. Stand up straight with shoes on.
12. Take a meter stick and line it up straight with your body, it should be upright. Zero centimeter
starts on bottom.
13. Ask a friend or classmate to help with this part. Ask them to measure you if you are taller
than 100 cm.
14. Using his/her right thumb placing it on top of the ruler. The thumb should never move.
15. Grab the meter stick with the left hand and place it above the thumb. Hold the ruler still to
check the measurement.
16. Record that of the height on the line provided on the front page. Share your results with your
entire classmate. Ask for their hand size and height. Have to get everybody’s information.
17. The data from your classmates should be place on the chart provided on the front page of
name, hand size, and height.
18. Record the all the data on a bar graph and scatter plot.
19. The bar graph must contain any 16 people on your chart. Make one bar graph for 16 people
for height and the same 16 people for hand size. Use separate peeve of paper for each
graph.
20. Label the hand size bar graph for x-axis “People”, your classmates’ name should be their
initials. The y-axis should be label “Hand size”. Color the bars different colors for each
individual.
21. The scatter plot should be recorded with both hand size and height. Make a point for each
person on the plot, if there are more than one person with the same hand size and height,
and then make the point bigger.
22. There is your Hand vs. Height data and recorded graph.
 Data & Analysis

When I look at my data and graphs I made I noticed several things. I calculated the average hand

size of our class, which is 17.77cm. The average of class height is 157.01cm, almost about 160cm. I

looked at my graph and I could tell what the mode for our class hand size and it is 17 cm. There are nine

classmates who have the hand size of 17cm, but there’s only three students having the mode of 161cm

for height. I figured out that the range for height is between 148 cm and 187cm, and the hand size is 16

cm through 21 cm. I noticed something when we compared our classmates who had 17 cm hands but

they didn’t have the same height. The people with 17 cm hands ranged the height from 150 cm to 170

cm.  That’s a 20 cm difference!!! On the scatter plot there are three big dots compare to everything else.

The dots mean that there is more than one person that has the same height and hand. Also I notice the

most important thing to me is that a bigger hand equals to a taller height.

Conclusion

            My hypothesis is true because the hand size does affect your height. The hand size does have a

direct relationship with your body height. The taller you are the bigger your hand size. We don’t have

much really tall people in our class, but they have pretty big hands. However not everyone with the same

hand size has the same body height. We could all have the same had size but we won’t all have the same

height.

            Something we could have done better is our measurement. It might not be really accurate

because we only had a meter stick to measure our height. Also in our data we had our teacher’s

information, which could have kind of changed our data a little. We should have stick to staying with the

age from 13 to 14; it could have made our data accurate. If I did this experiment again I will ask a parent

to help and I will use a measuring tape. I think it will be more accurate than a meter stick because it’s too

short to measure with.