White hair under the microscope

Courtesy of one of the blog readers (Ms P!), I have a few more microscope images to share with you. She sent me some of her hair, some black and some grey/white.

I loved how the images show that white hair actually has no colour at all and is in fact transparent.

White /Grey Hair - Transparent

Kink in White/Grey Hair

There is a debate about how elliptical hair can be and how much influence your ethnicity plays a role in that (i.e how different is African hair from African American hair from Afro Caribbean hair). I thought that we had similar elliptical hair although our descent is slightly different . (I am of African descent (Kenyan) while she is Black British of Caribbean descent)

She sent me two textures from her hair and one had many kinks while the other did not. The shape of the strands though were quite similar though (elliptical). In essence she had a patch of kinky and curly hair and another patch which was mostly curly but not kinky. None of her hair had double kinks.

Kink

From a diagnostic point of view, her hair had very long tapered ends although the strand length was about 6 inches which I thought was unusual as this long tapering is more common in very long hair (waist length and longer). 

Hair End Tapering (Note the difference in width compared to the other images)

Interestingly none of her hair was fibrillated at all unlike mine. I believe her hair is much more elastic than mine.

Thank you so much to Ms P for sending me her hair and of course granting me the permission to blog it!