Hi.
What if I told you that people actually
pay thousands of dollars to have a part of their body
intentionally modified-- and it's one
that we can see every day?
In other words, people modify their teeth to be straight.
This is called orthodontic braces.
I'm sure many people are already familiar with them
from adolescence, but what actually happens in your mouth
while your teeth are being moved--
there's a process called bony remodeling that's happening,
and it's really pretty fascinating.
As your teeth are moved, your jaw actually
partially dissolves around the tooth
to accommodate its new position.
But then instead of floating away,
there's another process in your body mediated
by cells called osteoblasts that actually build up
your bone around the new tooth's position.
This process happens throughout our entire bodies,
and scientists and engineers are exploiting
these really fascinating properties of our bodies
to build better implants for when, for example,
parts of our body or parts of our skeleton
are wearing out as we age.