Legs, Arms, and Height: Measuring Flexibility!

On August 9th, 2011 my group conducted an experiment on the second graders of EAB.  The skill my group tested was flexibility.  Flexibility is the quality of bending easily without breaking.  In our case, "breaking" would be bending your knees or not being able to stretch your arms further.  The factors we tested were arm length, leg length, and height.  At the time of the experiment, we thought that the leg length of a person would be a vital factor in their flexibility.  We thought that if one's legs were longer, it would be harder, because they had a longer distance to reach. In this experiment, our data supported our hypothesis.  Our data show that the some of the people with the longest leg lengths (76, 77, 78 cm) had the some of the worst flexibility scores (-4, -5, 2).  There was one child that was an anomaly.  This child had very long legs (82 cm) and an average to high arm length (55 cm).  Their flexibility score was six, which was one of the highest.  I then analyzed the arm lengths of the children and how it affected their flexibility.  My data showed that some of the children with the shortest legs (69,70,71 cm), had the longest arms (60,64 cm).  As I analyzed my data, it showed that the arm lengths of the children did not affect their flexibility.  Having a longer arm did not give you an advantage.  The children with the longest arms had some of the worst flexibility scores (-2, -4, -6).  Unfortunately, my group was not able to test the flexibility of the child with the longest arm length (64 cm) so therefore, my results may be slightly inaccurate.  If we had tested more students, we would have been able to come to a better understanding.  I was not able to draw any conclusions about the correlation between the height and flexibility of the children.  The height factor varied greatly.  Some of the shortest children had the best flexibility scores (5, 6, 8), and some had the worst.  Also, some of the tallest children had the worst flexibility scores (-4, -5), and some had the best (3, 6).  As you can see, the factors we chose were good elements for testing flexibility.  We were therefore, able to draw clear conclusions.  These mixed correlations shows that the arm/leg length ratio does not affect one's flexibility rather it is the length of the leg that is the biggest determinant in this experiment.  That being said, I feel that there may be other factors that affect flexibility that we have not measured in this experiment.  Therefore, it may be too much to conclude that you can determine a persons flexibility solely by the length of their legs.  I'd like to do more experiments testing different factors such as, length of waist, ability to rotate joints in order to more fully determine the precise factors that determine a person's flexibility.