When using a chemical relaxer, it changes the shape of the hair by breaking down which bonds?

When using a chemical relaxer, the process primarily involves breaking down disulfide bonds in the hair. Disulfide bonds are strong chemical bonds that form between the sulfur atoms in the amino acids of keratin, which is the protein that makes up hair. These bonds significantly contribute to the hair's strength and overall structure.

Chemical relaxers introduce specific agents that reduce the disulfide bonds, allowing the hair to be reshaped. This is crucial in the process of altering tightly coiled or curly hair to a straighter texture. By effectively breaking these disulfide bonds, the structural integrity of the hair is temporarily compromised, enabling the desired straightened style to be achieved when the hair is set in the new configuration.

While hydrogen and salt bonds also play a role in the overall strength and shape of hair, they are much weaker than disulfide bonds and are more readily broken and reformed with heat and moisture. Covalent bonds, on the other hand, are not typically affected by chemical relaxers since they represent a different type of chemical bond that involves a stronger connection in the atomic structure itself. Therefore, targeting disulfide bonds specifically is the key action in hair relaxing treatments, confirming the identification of disulfide bonds as the correct