When we get an injury, what is happening to our skin/flesh/body on a molecular and atomic level? How are they separating?
In: Biology
Cells are held in their structure by a big mesh thing made of a protein called collagen. Both cells and collagen are microscopically tiny, so when you get a wound, what’s happening is a whole bunch of cells are being torn apart and a whole bunch of that collagen scaffold is being destroyed. The remnants of this are quickly cleaned up to prevent necrosis (too much dead cell fragments can cause other cells nearby to start dying), then movable cells called fibroblasts swarm to the wound and start rebuilding the collagen mesh. Meanwhile, nearby stem cells divide rapidly to create the new skin cells that will fill the cell spaces in this collagen.
Atomic level, nothing is happening at all.
Molecular level, depends on what kind of injury. If it is an injury that affects the chemistry, then nothing is happening at all as well. Injury that affects the chemistry includes:
* chemical burns
* burns
* frost bite
(you can google all of the above)
If you are talking about injuries like getting a paper cut, or bruises, then nothing is happening at the atomic and molecular level. You should be looking at the cellular level.
Some cells are destroyed, that means the cell membrane are destroyed. Cell membranes are made up of lipid bilayer, which are made up lipid molecules. These molecules are ‘sticking’ with each other through “non-covalent interactions such as van der Waals forces, electrostatic and hydrogen bonds” (from wiki)
If you get injured, basically there are stronger forces affecting these the bilipid layers that tears them apart.
But then again, it usually needs to go through the keratin first.
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