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My father told me that if you cut hair or garden grass during waning moon, they will grow slower. Is it true?

Drake
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  • Does it depend on a shining moon, and the growth of grass in the light of the moon (but we never heard, that hair needs light to grow), or just on the moon phase - no matter if day or night, clouds on the sky or not? – user unknown Aug 09 '11 at 21:11
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    Maybe dad needed an excuse to not cut the grass during a crescent moon? :-O – Jens May 08 '12 at 17:15

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Of course not. Even if grass or hair would be affected by the moon phase (which I doubt), the speed with which they grow would be affected by what the phase is, not what the phase was when you cut it. Hair is dead, and the root of the hair do not know when the top was cut.

There is no references for this answer, because I can't find anyone that has researched this. :-)

Lennart Regebro
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    #include "Sklivvz/needs_references.h" – user5341 May 18 '11 at 16:18
  • during my uni studies, I had to write an essay in Biology I about a scientific study on grass growing. It was literally the most boring study I have ever read, and even if I still had the reference, I would never subject anyone else to the pain of reading it. However, as a result I can contradict you. Growth rates of the studied grasses *increased* when the grass was cut/grazed. They did not mention moon-phases; that would have been vaguely interesting... – Oddthinking May 18 '11 at 16:52
  • @Oddthinking: Thanks, but that doesn't contradict anything I said. :-) – Lennart Regebro May 18 '11 at 17:44
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    it appears that the trauma of reading that boring paper carefully has made me subconsciously avoid reading anything carefully ever since. :-( Sorry, you are right. – Oddthinking May 19 '11 at 00:22
  • But, @Lennart, you're using false logic. You say that gras growth isn't affected by the moon, but what would happen if it was. To be affected, something must be different, and it is pure fantasy what that would be, and with which consequences. But from fantasy, you can conclude anything. – user unknown Aug 09 '11 at 21:16
  • @user unknown: I say that X is false and therefore A is false, and then I say that even if X was true, then Y is false, also rendering A false. I therefore give two reasons why A is false. This is not false logic in any way. – Lennart Regebro Aug 10 '11 at 07:04
  • "If grass growth was infected by the moon" is pure speculation. It would need a reason; something would have to be different. What? What would follow from that? You can't argue that way. If you invent a reason, others could invent other reasons. None of them is real. – user unknown Aug 10 '11 at 18:29
  • @user unknown: I'm not inventing any reasons. Also, I don't get notified by your comments unless you @ me. I don't know why... – Lennart Regebro Aug 17 '11 at 16:07
  • I don't know why, too. I understood the notification system that way, that the person, who made the question or answer is informed, and one additional person, if marked with @ like in @Lennart (and only the first (3?) characters are significant (which can be problematic for me, with all these user31321)). – user unknown Aug 17 '11 at 19:45
  • @user unknown: This time I got notified. So it was probably a temporary glitch. – Lennart Regebro Aug 17 '11 at 22:05
  • Uhm as a woman who shaves, the body knows when hair has been cut and it rushes in to regrow it to a certain length then it stops. If the moon is truly responsible for the tides could it not also affect us since we are made up largely of water? I beg to differ on this gentleman. You'd think with me shaving my body would say "she doesn't want hair there we should stop" lol but no! We are machines and we have very little control over our bodily functions. Perhaps an experiment could prove or disprove this. Farmers rely on the sun and moon for planting...are we so different than plants? – Let A Pro Do IT Aug 22 '14 at 04:13
  • There is plenty of research that shows that hair does not grow faster or thicker when you cut it. It's an illusion based on that hair that is uncut is long and thins towards the end, while cut hair is short and it's end will be wide and sharp. So we can indeed disprove this, but why waste time on such a meaningless subject? – Lennart Regebro Aug 22 '14 at 15:23