Saturday, 12 November 2011

human biology - What is the number of cells in a line of a fingerprint?

I have been reading a little about the size of cells and was curious as to how small they really were.



I have noticed that on my finger, the outlines of the fingerprint are made up of thin lines. In fact, some of them are so thin that I have difficulty imagining anything thinner I can make out with the naked eye.



I have read that the naked eye has a resolution of 0.1 millimeters = 100 micrometers, whereas eukaryotic cells range in diameter of 10 - 100 micrometers.



Putting this information together, would it be reasonable to conclude that the lines on my fingers have a width ranging from 1 - 10 skin cells? Is there any satisfactory method to verify this without fancy equipment? Is it even true?



P.S.



Are there also more scientific names for these "finger lines" so that I can look it up somewhere? Googling "finger lines" brings up a lot of stuff about palm reading.

No comments:

Post a Comment