How do bones grow?
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A growing bone lengthens when cells in its so-called growth plate, a region at the ends of growing bones, multiply and expand. The cells, called chondrocytes, form the cartilage that provides a scaffold for the mature calcified bone that later grows on top of them.
Your parents probably told you that eating foods rich in calcium makes your bones grow, but there’s a bit more to it than that.
There’s two important processes: making bone within connective tissue to make ‘flat’ bones (intramembranous), and making bone within cartilage to make ‘long’ bones (endochondral).
In connective tissue, unspecialised cells differentiate into ‘bone cells’ and keep doing it until they form a whole flat bone.
In cartilage, the cartilage itself acts as a mold which is slowly filled and then replaced by unspecialised cells becoming ‘bone cells’, like a hollow jelly bean getting stuffed with tiny rocks.
In adolescence, your bones lengthen because of a band inside them which continues to produce ‘bone cells’ in one direction. There is a limit to how long your bones can grow, and it ends when that band stops producing ‘bone cells’, usually in your twenties.
[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOKLFdP4pjE)
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