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The height comparison tool works for a wide variety of people and objects. For example, you can compare celebrity heights. Other height comparisons include presidents, nationalities, hominids, fictional characters, athletes, animals, buildings, vehicles, and even celestial objects. The height comparison tool can also do custom height comparisons where you input height measurements and perhaps even a custom image.
Press the ‘Next’ button to see another random height comparison. Otherwise, use the forms labeled ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ below to setup your own height comparison. Choose a category and subject to compare and then press the update button. Don’t forget to share your height comparison by using the copy to clipboard button and pasting it on social media or anywhere on the web. See below for more information on the height comparison tool.
Units: imperial metric
Using the Height Comparison Tool
The height comparison tool can be used in the basic way explained above. It can also be used to do custom comparisons. For example, if you want to compare your own height with, say, Robert Wadlow, you can do so as follows: Set Robert Wadlow for one side, and then for the other side select the category ‘Average Person’ and then select either average male or female. Next input your height.
If you want to get a bit more advanced, you can take a picture of yourself, crop it so that there is no space above or below your body (you can do this with Microsoft Paint or Word), and then upload it to a file sharing service such as Drop Box. Next, get the url for the image and paste it in the Image url text box.
Adjustment
You might have noticed the adjustment field. This is to account for such things as footwear, like high heels, and slouching. It is typically set at 1” as that is the approximate thickness of most shoes. But for celebrity height comparisons where women often have high heels, the adjustment can be changed to, say, 4”. To see an example of this, consider the Jennefer Aniston height comparison with Zeng Jinlian, the tallest women on record to have lived. While Jennifer Aniston is wearing what look to be about 4″ heels, Zeng Jinlian is hunched over with her scoliosis and so is given a -4″ adjustment. The adjustment field can also be used for other objects such as, say, a flag pole or antennae on a skyscraper.
Height Comparison of Zeng Jinlian by Reginald Rachuba and Jennifer Aniston by Jared
Length Comparison
The height comparison tool can also compare lengths as follows: If the width of an image is much greater than the height, the length data is also provided in the output. The length data is secondary as it is dependant on the image proportions, and thus may not be as accurate. That being said, subjects like the Titanic and Blue Whale were added with correct length as the priority. To achieve this for a custom image, set the height to the true length multiplied by the image height in pixels over the image width in pixels.
Units for Height Comparisons
You can select between metric and imperial. The input is then either cm or inches and feet. The output automatically changes to larger units such as m, km, and miles as larger objects are compared.
The Height Comparison Scaling Exponent
You may have noticed the scaling exponent field. This is the power to which height scales with mass by, and thereby volume too. Other height comparison tools assume a cubic relationship, where proportions are maintained as people get larger. This is in contrast to the Body Mass Index, which assumes a square relationship. In actuality, humans scale somewhere between cube and square, somewhere around 2.5. That’s why this is the default scaling exponent.
The scaling exponent only comes into play when doing height comparisons that use the default male and female silhouettes. This is because these, unlike the specific images, must scale to a variety of sizes.
With a scaling exponent of 2.5, people get a bit narrower as they get taller. If you increase this number, this will be diminished and vice versa.
Origin of the Height Comparison Tool
The height comparison tool was originally built to give people an appreciation for tall people and height differences. This explains the presence of Robert Wadlow, Zeng Jinlian, and Yao Ming. The project grew from there to look at tall outside of humans and that’s where Chewbaka, the Saturn V rocket, and the Burg Khalafi came in. Going forward, the plan is to include anything noteworthy for height, whether tall or short, as well as interesting for comparisons sake. This includes ancient hominids, presidents, athletes, celebrities, fictional characters, and inanimate objects. Who wouldn’t want to see what Lebron James looks like next to Bigfoot?
Height Comparison of Lebron James and Bigfoot. Sources: By Steve Jurvetson (Flickr: LeBron James) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons And By No machine-readable author provided. LeCire assumed (based on copyright claims). [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Contributing
Perhaps you feel like contributing to the height comparison project. The simplest way is to gather some height data, preferably in metric, and send it to TallDotLife@gmail.com.
If you have time, images would be helpful too. Please remove the backgrounds and crop to fit the subject. There are many programs you can do this with, Microsoft Word being just one. If you do provide images, please make sure they can be shared for free, such as with a Creative Commons license (Flickr and Wikicommons are good places to look), and please include the attribution link or html code.
So what do you think of the height comparison tool? Do you have any suggestions?
Please share your comparisons by using the copy to clipboard button and posting it to social media or anywhere on the web.
For similar posts check out the calculators page. There you will find the height calculator and the height percentile calculator.