I have a character in a fictional story whose ability is to “shatter things in their environment like glass” and I wanted to know what exactly it would be affecting if it shattered a person’s limb.
To be more grotesque and exact: whatever this character touches shatters like glass, or whenever they briefly make contact the object shatters if it were made out of glass.
Because this is magic it doesn’t necessitate a scientific explanation, but right now I’m looking up the skeletal system and the epidermis to learn what exactly makes a human body resilient/support itself/what would specifically need to be altered to achieve this catastrophe.
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So you could definitely shatter bone like glass. It’s “solid” and can crack and break.
Skin, muscle, and connective tissue cannot really “shatter” like glass. Not in a realistic way. But if you did want some level of “that kind of makes sense” type of realism, you could have the ability cause that connective tissue and skin to tear, meaning the ligaments holding your bones together fall apart, the tendons holding your muscles in place fall apart, and you skin tears up so it doesn’t act like a balloon
We don’t measure “sturdiness” of an organism. That’s not a thing. And certainly you know that it’s physically impossible to make things shatter that don’t already have the properties that make it shatter, like being brittle. You can’t just touch an apple for example and make it suddenly have the properties of glass.
Humans are held together by lots of different things that do different jobs. The most basic and central thing is our skeleton. That serves as an anchor point for muscles and the rigid framework for bodies (bones are one of the few part of our body that can shatter). Most of the rest of our bodies are held together by things that are varying degrees of soft and stretchy. Muscles are held to bones by stretch connective tissue called tendons, and bones are connected to other bones by similar connective tissue called ligaments. Our internal organs are also held in place by various types of connective tissue that have different degrees of stretchiness and fibrousness. At the smallest level, our cells are held together by an intracellular matrix of fluids and binding proteins that give our tissues flexibility.
So in short, aside from out skeletons and teeth, we’re designed to be squishy and flexible. You can’t shatter something that’s squishy and flexible, and there’s no way make a living thing not have at least some parts that are like that. Even animals like lobsters with their shells are squishy on the inside. So there’s nothing you could change to make humans or any other life forms brittle enough to shatter while still being life forms at all.
On the microscopic scale, the individual cells are linked together with various types of “cell junctions.” On the macroscopic scale, there are various types of connective tissue; examples include ligaments, which connect bones; tendons, which connect muscles to bones; and reticular fibers, which support lymphoid organs.
So, long story short, it’s connective tissue that keeps the body together.