How long is the spinal cord?

Question: How long is the spinal cord?

Asked by lani to Chris, Emily, Martin, Natalie, Tamsin on 20 Mar 2010 in Categories: General.
- Chris Cooper answered on 20 Mar 2010:
  
  I learnt something answering this – it runs from your brain down your spinal column and is around 45 cm long in men and around 43 cm long in women. Obviously a bit less in children. It is about as wide as your thumb.
  
  When we scientists have gone, this kind of question is pretty easy to answer by typing into google or searching for “spinal cord” in wikipedia. The second answer on google is a nice “neuroscience for kids” page that gives a simple explanation.
  
  See: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/spinal.html
- Martin Coath answered on 21 Mar 2010:
  
  Brilliant question!
  
  I guess the obvious answer is “as long as your spine!” LOL!
  
  No, really, that is totally the WRONG answer!
  
  It goes about two thirds of the way down your back, from the base of your brain to roughly where your back curves inwards (called the lumbar region). You can measure this and find out how long yours is!
  
  It is not a single chord but a complex bundle of all sorts of cells, some of which (as you know) carry signals from your brain to your muscles and from all of you back to your brain.
  
  Very interesting – yes? 🙂
- Emily Cook answered on 22 Mar 2010:
  
  A good variation on the question how long is a piece of string!
  
  It depends a bit on the length of the person but it is roughly 45cm in men and a couple of cm smaller in women.
- Natalie Stanford answered on 22 Mar 2010:
  
  Wikipedia tells me it is about 45cm long in men and 43cm long in women. I never knew that. Some of the questions on here are quite interesting. Even I’m learning new things 🙂
  
  And Chris is right, we don’t know everything either, but googling it or checking in wikipedia is really easy and you can find lots of useful information.

Question: How long is the spinal cord?

Comments