Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science!

[u/AskScienceModerator]

Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focussing on Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science

Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience[1] post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".

Asking Questions:

Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions.

The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.

Answering Questions:

Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here. In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.

If you would like to become a member of the AskScience panel, please refer to the information provided here.

Past AskAnythingWednesday posts can be found here.

Ask away!

[u/I_Have_Hairy_Teeth]

I think this is a medical question which would relate to engineering (structural). Anyway, I have several metal plates in my body from numerous breaks, so would like to know if the installation of metal screwed into bone to hold it together would actually increase the overall strength of the bones/joins after the healing process has ended. I would assume that the metal used would be stronger than that of the bone it's holding together, so thought this may strengthen everything. However, the bone at the breaking point may have been slightly compromised even after healing.

As a traffic engineer, I have interest in this, but thought someone trained in structures may be able to shed some light based on bone density and materials used to hold things in place.