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Flashback Friday: This professor measured his fingernail growth for 35 years. The results will amaze you!

Explore the fascinating study of fingernail growth rates and how they change over time. Understand variations across different nails.

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Image:Flickr/Shannon Kringen

Have you ever wondered how fast your fingernails grow? And whether they all grow at the same rate? Or perhaps you’ve noticed that your fingernails grow more slowly than they used to? If so, you and William B. Bean have something in common! Professor Bean painstakingly measured the growth of his fingernails for decades, and he published the minutia of these measurements after 20, 25, 30 and 35 years. The full texts of these papers are a delight to read. And the findings? Well, we’ll let Professor Bean speak for himself! (Be sure to check out the fantastically detailed chart of his fingernail growth rates below…) “When I first began to measure the rate of nail growth, I scored marks on all my nails. Within a few months I found that each nail had its own pace. This was clearly distinguishable even by the rather crude method that ...

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