Over a dozen years ago, she conducted a middle school science fair experiment. It seemed a bit crazy, but she got people to help her, test subjects, willing to be measured every day for a week. She wanted to demonstrate the effect of gravity on a person’s height. And, with a sound experimental design, she set out to show that people shrink.
Having your height measured every day doesn’t sound too intrusive even if it was twice a day. The peculiar part, the prohibitive part, was that she needed to measure their height in the morning and in the evening, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, just as they got out of bed and just as they went to bed…for a week.
Before the subjects got out of bed, they would call her. Now for the people she lived with, this wasn’t too much of a problem. We would call out to her to let her know that we wanted to get up. She would line us up against the wall and mark our height. Simple. Where the simple became a bit absurd is when the neighbors would have to call to tell her to come over and measure them early in the morning and late at night. Thankfully, she picked spring break week to work on this. I couldn’t imagine adding this to our hectic school morning ritual.
After a week’s worth of trials, she had her results. People shrink; not just over years as you can see when you measure your stature against your aging parents, but over hours. Females more than males, young more than old, decrease in height during the day. I actually “loose” a half an inch every day. Luckily, after a restorative night’s sleep, I gain it back.
And now in 2016, NASA announced gravity experiments they conducted. Numerous news reports proclaimed, astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth two inches taller after a year in the International Space Station. Without the effects of gravity on his skeletal structure, he “grew.” Who knew? Rebeca knew!