Body Range of Motion Quiz

Off the top of your head, WITHOUT moving your body, can you state the rotational range of motion in degrees for a normal human for:

The foot with leg extended?

The hand using only the forearm?

The hand rotating the entire arm?

(Answers below.)

V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V

The foot can usually rotate about 90 degrees.

The hand and forearm can rotate about 180 degrees.

The hand using the entire arm can rotate nearly 360 DEGREES! That's an astonishing range of motion, which got me excited about this whole thing. (I'm easily amused, I guess.)

Not sure about the human head... maybe about 180 degrees?

(Being a small robot made from a gumball machine, my head turns overs 360 degrees, especially in the presence of a beautiful and voluptuous brunette.)

360 degrees if you are possesed. I saw it in a movie once.

You can rotate the hand (with the whole arm and shoulder) 720 degrees, and end up back where you started. The trick is to rotate 360 with the hand between the arm and body, then bring the hand above the head for the rest. This works by F. M. And kenisiology.

MPEGs, please. I can't visualize from your description. (What's FM?)

Hold a plate on your left hand. Pretend it has food on it. Arm is straight down, and hand is palm up pointing toward front.

Rotate the plate inward towards the body. As the hand is staight back, continue to rotate, raising the arm, 'till the arm is about shoulder height, and the palm is pointing forwartd. At this point, the elbow is 90 degrees. This is the most awkard of all the positions. Now the palm sontinues rotating, this time by nbending the elbow more... When the palm is pointing backwards again, start to rotate the palm from the wrist, and when the wrist is pointed forward. At this point lower the arm, 'till you end up where you started.

The M in FM stands for magic.

Damn, and I thought topology was perverse. Now I have Jell-o on my shoes! Oh, you said 'pretend' about the food. Heh-heh.

I've tried my best about six times, but I'm afraid the word-description has too many ambiguities in it. Oh, now I get it. But I don't know if I'm doing it your way. I'm rotating the disc of the plate, keeping the Jell-o up, through 360 at my side, then raising it up and passing it over my head for another 360 degrees. If a gyro-stabilized camera was hovering over the plate it would appear to rotate through 720 degrees.

Oh, yes, now I see where you talked about 'over the head' in your original post. The Jell-o is quite dizzy and I have to see a doctor about a rotator cuff.

Neat. Doubt I'd advertise that normal ROM for the hand is 720 degrees, though.

Is sounds like you got it. So the ROM is infinity. You go arround 720 *twice arround* and end up where you started. Do it again and again and again and again and...

It is, however, impossible to rotate the hand 360 degrees *once arround* and end up where you started. You end up in an awkward position, not where you started.

[...]

Uhhh, too much like a Peewee Herman fighting move for me. Especially with both hands. On second thought, why intimidate people when you can make them laugh until senseless?

That's what it's all a-bout.