Why do we have cowlicks? Why can’t all of our hair just grow in the same? Also, where did the name come from?
In: 51
“Assume the cow is a sphere.” I don’t know if you know that joke, but I swear it applies here.
First, imagine you have a flat square piece of fabric that has a “nap” to it, like suede or velour. You can stroke it so that all the hairs are happily lying down in the same direction.
Now imagine a ball covered in hair. It turns out that there are always at least two “singularities”, places where the the direction of the nap is forced to change abruptly. One way to do it is to comb all the hair “eastward” or “westward”, and end up with swirls at the north and south poles.
There’s a mathematical theorem (in topology, I reckon, but don’t rightly recall) that proves that you can’t comb a sphere without creating singularities like this. For this purpose, cows and humans and all other fur-bearing critters can be modeled as spheres. We all have cowlicks somewhere, because spheres do.
Why is our singulhairity on the top of our head? That part I don’t know. But there had to be one somewhere.
Latest Answers