Rapunzel's Hair Again as Rapunzel Week Reboots

This video from ScienceFriday.com (courtesy of Disney) was NPR's Video Pick of the Week. I tried to start Rapunzel Week last week with a discussion of the possible science in the story and then was consumed by other projects as the week progressed. So I'm rebooting with this video and short discussion of Rapunzel's hair animation in Tangled. (And, no, this week will not be all about Tangled. I discussed the movie in short detail last night. Most of this week will be about literary and illustrated Rapunzels.)

More from NPR's interview for the video:

LICHTMAN: Speaking with Kelly Ward, she said, you know, you want it to look real like it's real hair. But if Rapunzel was for real - you know, she has 70 feet of hair in this film - she'd be carrying a lot. That'd be like 80 pounds...

FLATOW: Wow.

LICHTMAN: ...that she'd be towing behind her. I mean, she would not be...

FLATOW: Or headache.

LICHTMAN: ...doing summersaults and...

FLATOW: Right.

LICHTMAN: ...back flips like she does in this movie. She'd be her neck would be strained and she...

FLATOW: Right. They had to fudge it a little bit about what real hair would how much it would weigh and how you could fool around with it.

LICHTMAN: Yeah. It was interesting. It was sort of making the physics look real in some ways and then, you know, giving it weight so it looks like a real object, but not too much weight...

And, to comment on last Sunday's comments on that hair post: No, this isn't about overthinking the fairy tale. We all know it is a fantasy. However, it provides a learning impetus for children (and adults) to learn about real hair, biology and physics, for it brings the topics into an interesting context. I'm not trying to ruin the fairy tale, but to encourage learning across disciplines. After all, I was once a physics major and still have some of that scientist personality buried within me. Science is still such a mystery to so many kids that if using fairy tales helps them learn more in a fun way, I'm all for it.