Not sure whether to flair this as biology or physics, but any idea why?
In: Biology
Just to add on there are a few types of burn
Radiation is on you missed, for example sunburn is a radiation burn from UV energy but there are other types too
The other classes were wet, dry and chemical last time I remember
Following on from this, you hear the term burn being used when talking about applying fertilizers straight to a plant. How does this compare, how do the nutrients “burn” the plant?
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“Chemical burn” is a term that refers to the effect, rather than the process. It’s used to indicate the damage that was done to the skin or the organ, and the source of it.
In terms of damage, cells are damaged or ruptured over a large area of skin, and “first degree, second, or third” indicates how deeply into the various layers of the skin the damage is, basically the extent of the damage.
It’s more of a layman’s medical term; the doctors are concerned about the damage that was done, rather than the differences between heat, cold, and acids or bases.
To my understanding, you have the concept backwards. Burns are not tied to fire, but fire is tied to burns. Burns are when a forced chemical change takes place. For fire, it’s when combustion occurs and the material changes as the fuel is consumed. For chemicals, it’s some other process, but fundamentally changed the molecules it interacted with in some way.
So! I’ve burned myself with acid when I was very young (parents were apartment caretakers and it was a faulty child lock, but that’s another story for another day) and most of my legs are covered with “burns” and I did this when I was around 2-3 years old so I can simplify the answer.
From my experience the difference between a “chemical burn” and a heat one is a chemical , such as acid, doesn’t actually “burn” your skin. My skin never charred or was actually “burnt” it was more technically “eaten” (it looked like my skin turned into a green pancake initially)
Its just a lot easier and less horrifying to say “I burnt myself” rather than “i was partially eaten alive by a chemical”
A burn is a result of “denaturing” the proteins of skin. Like when you cook an egg, the strands of proteins that are liquid scrunch and kink up on a microscopic level, and cannot be returned to their previous state. You can “cook” an egg with alcohol.
The same happens when you get a burn whether it’s from heat or from exposure to a corrosive substance.
Referring to these as “burns” is mostly a matter of convenience. In the hospital injuries to the skin from heat or cold are referred to as “thermal injuries”. There’s also electrical injuries and chemical and so on. However it’s the same group of people in the hospital that deal with all these types of injuries and it’s usually the burn unit or plastic surgery teams. Because of this people often just call everything a burn of one type or another. In reality it’s more about the fact that it’s all injuries to the skin.
When you work on those units there’s technical terms that are used to be clear about what type of injury and how bad. So they might say it’s a superficial partial thickness scald to 4% total body surface area. But in layman’s terms they mean the person was has a second degree burn from hot water to part of their arm and hand.
Chemical reaction rather than energy such a heat have denatured the proteins in the skin and therefore caused damage.
i burned myself with something that was frozen quite hard by boiling liquid helium last week (so probably double digit kelvin, max 100 maybe). Fortunately enough I was quick to remove my arm. It stayed painfull for a few days and felt exactly like a “hot” burn.
Now my skin feels weird and heals slowly.
Stay away from cryogenic stuff kids.
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