Editing Bone (section)

===Mechanical===
{{See also|Skeleton|Human skeleton|List of bones of the human skeleton}}
Bones serve a variety of mechanical functions. Together the bones in the body form the [[skeleton]]. They provide a frame to keep the body supported, and an attachment point for [[skeletal muscle]]s, [[tendon]]s, [[ligament]]s and [[joint]]s, which function together to generate and transfer forces so that individual body parts or the whole body can be manipulated in three-dimensional space (the interaction between bone and muscle is studied in [[biomechanics]]).

Bones protect internal organs, such as the [[skull]] protecting the [[brain]] or the [[ribs]] protecting the [[heart]] and [[lungs]]. Because of the way that bone is formed, bone has a high [[compressive strength]] of about {{Cvt|170|MPa|kgf/cm2|lk=on}},<ref name="Schmidt-Nielsen"/> poor [[tensile strength]] of 104–121 MPa, and a very low [[shear stress]] strength (51.6 MPa).<ref>{{cite book|title=BENG 112A Biomechanics, Winter Quarter, 2013| vauthors = Vincent K |publisher=Department of Bioengineering, University of California|chapter=Topic 3: Structure and Mechanical Properties of Bone|chapter-url=http://cmrg.ucsd.edu/Courses/be112a/Topics|access-date=24 March 2015|archive-date=28 May 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180528103922/http://cmrg.ucsd.edu/Courses/be112a/Topics}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Turner CH, Wang T, Burr DB | title = Shear strength and fatigue properties of human cortical bone determined from pure shear tests | journal = Calcified Tissue International | volume = 69 | issue = 6 | pages = 373–378 | date = December 2001 | pmid = 11800235 | doi = 10.1007/s00223-001-1006-1 | s2cid = 30348345 }}</ref> This means that bone resists pushing (compressional) stress well, resist pulling (tensional) stress less well, but only poorly resists shear stress (such as due to torsional loads). While bone is essentially [[Brittleness|brittle]], bone does have a significant degree of [[elasticity (physics)|elasticity]], contributed chiefly by [[collagen]].

Mechanically, bones also have a special role in [[Hearing (sense)|hearing]]. The [[ossicles]] are three small bones in the [[middle ear]] which are involved in sound transduction.