Understanding The S-Shaped Growth Curve Of Life
One of the prime features of living beings is the growth. All living organisms have a beginning (birth) and an end (death). This is common to all living organisms but the time that they spend in between varies considerably. We have some (especially micro-organisms) which live only for a few moments and some which survive hundreds of years. It is during this time they pass through different phases, each is called as a stage of life.
Human beings too pass through different stages after their birth which includes the childhood, adult, old age etc. When we plot the growth (rate) against the time of life, an S-shaped curve is obtained.
This S-shaped curve depicts the rate of growth of a human being at different stages of life. It is quite evident that the rate is slow at the initial stage of life, that is, when a person is born. This is represented by the initial of the graph running parallel to the time. It is important to mention here that at the initial stage of life there is terrific increase in the number of cells of humans.
The whole energy is consumed in increasing the number of cells. You might be tempted to think that if there is an increase in the number of cells, there should have been the increase in size. The fact is that there is no doubt an increase in the cell number at this stage of life but size of each cell decreases with every division.
The stationary growth is followed by the steep line running almost parallel to growth rate suggesting high growth. This is the time before and after puberty where a lot of other changes appear in body. This phase is mainly marked by cell elongation.
Once a person has received the maximum growth, it becomes stationary again. There is some kink downwards at the end which suggests (hypothetical) de-growth in the old age just before death.
