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Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: Calvin Stafford on 01/10/2010 21:30:02

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: Calvin Stafford on 01/10/2010 21:30:02

Calvin Stafford asked the Naked Scientists:
   
What is the hardest bone in your body to break?

What do you think?

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: Geezer on 01/10/2010 22:20:39

Your head bone maybe?

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: JnA on 02/10/2010 00:32:01

I've always thought the femur was the hardest.. maybe it's the densest does that always correlate to hard? The three bones in your inner ear would be pretty hard to break.

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: chris on 02/10/2010 09:25:23

I'd go for the ossicles - the tiny bones in the middle ear - because they are contained in a bony cavity and are therefore much harder to access.

Chris

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: Don_1 on 02/10/2010 12:03:16

I would agree with Chris on the point of a bone protected by another bone should be the hardest to break. But the strongest bone, I would go along with JnA, the Femur. That said, there are some whose ability to display incredible thick-headedness would suggest the Skull.

In the furtherance of medical science, I shall conduct a few experiments for you.

"WIFEY! Come hither, I need you for a few experiments."

Title: what is the hardest bone in your body to break?
Post by: thedoc on 10/12/2010 15:30:59

We discussed this question on our  show
 Diana -  Okay. Well I reckon it’s the petrous part of the temporal bone and you can find the temporal bone sort of in behind your ear, underneath your ear.  The petrous part of it is this really solid, sort of stony (which is what petrous actually means) bit of bone which goes around in all your auditory canals and it’s the bit of bone that survives really well in archaeology as well. I mean, you can sort of bash it and it just stays in one piece. But a lot of people say that the femur is also a really hard bone to break because it’s quite solid. It is sort of thick and it is your thigh bone, but I reckon the petrous part is the best contender.
Dave -  I guess there’s two different questions. One is, how strong is the bone and also, how likely is it to get damaged? Your femur might be incredibly strong, but it’s also kind of a major structural part of your body and when you fall off a motorbike, it gets bashed really hard.
Diana -  Exactly, yeah. It’s one of those that you're more likely to injure. The malleus, the incus, and stapes, the little tiny, tiny bones inside your ear are probably the hardest to break because they're so hard to get to, but you know, if you took them out, and gave them a good bashing, they’d break very easily.

Click to visit the show page for the podcast in which this question is answered. (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/2010.10.03/) Alternatively, [chapter podcast=2819 track=10.10.03/Naked_Scientists_Show_10.10.03_7292.mp3](https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenakedscientists.com%2FHTML%2Ftypo3conf%2Fext%2Fnaksci_podcast%2Fgnome-settings-sound.gif&hash=f2b0d108dc173aeaa367f8db2e2171bd) listen to the answer now[/chapter] or [download as MP3] (http://nakeddiscovery.com/downloads/split_individual/10.10.03/Naked_Scientists_Show_10.10.03_7292.mp3)