Why are burns due to chemicals or intense cold also called “burns”? What do they have in common with the regular burns due to fire or heat?

Question

Not sure whether to flair this as biology or physics, but any idea why?

In: Biology

Answer 1

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.