system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
eli5: if your teeth are attached to your jaw, how do braces move them around with out breaking the teeth away from the sockets in the jaw?
gpt
They don't attach directly to the jaw bone, your teeth attach to a ligament (a periodontal ligament) and the ligament attaches to the bone. The bone socket they are in isn't like a super tight plug in socket, it's more like a vague hole they float in that the ligament locks them in place into. So you can pull on a tooth and the ligament can resist and give up resistance on and let the tooth move in certain ways. There is very specific rules on how a tooth can move, but those rules are often similar to the rules of how a tooth could have been out of place in the first place so it works out.