All mysteries
Mystery #3Tier 1-2blood vessels / skin

Why do you get a bruise?

You bash your knee on a table: the skin isn't cut, no blood spills out, yet a day later a purple-blue mark blooms there, then slowly turns green and yellow before fading away. If your skin never broke, where did all that colour come from? And why does it change colour like a tiny sunset under your skin?

A bruise, blood that has leaked from tiny broken vessels under unbroken skin.
Photo: Bejinhan · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Your guess

What's your hunch: if the skin didn't break, what makes a bruise go purple under it?

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