I know that when something is cold or hot it’s just our sense of when molecules move slower or faster but I don’t understand why that can kill you. Why can something damage you if its molecules just move slower or faster?
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Because you are mostly little bags of water called cells. Heat and cold can both make those cells burst. They burst and die and because it happens fast holes open up on a larger scale. Cold also prevents most of the chemicals in your body from moving correctly.
If your cells accelerate in one place in your body due to external influence they decay rapidly… A burn
> Why can something damage you if its molecules just move slower or faster?
Because you are also made of molecules, and some of those molecules break if you hit them hard enough. Others bond with other molecules if they can hit each other hard enough. That changes which molecules you’re made of, which changes their properties, which makes them not have the properties they need to have for you to continue to be alive.
For example, your skin is held together by long fibers of a molecule called collagen. If you heat collagen up enough, it breaks into pieces, and you get gelatin instead, which won’t hold your skin together well.
Hot means molecules move more and are more prone to react. If the water in your body evaporates, your proteins cook (become fragmented) and you receive a damage.
Cold does harm you in two ways: blood becomes thicker so it can’t flow to all places. Some organs start failing.
Second: Water in your body freezes and the ice crystals break your cells. A low and local exposure causes frostbites; basically, your cells when un-freeze are in the same state as if you have been beaten with a hammer, as the ice has smashed the cells walls. Frostbites are very very painful even for very little exposures; in big amount they kill you, as the dead cells do rot and your body can’t clean the area quick enough, you lose limbs for infection or even die of infection.
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