The Scholar: Aidan Bourbonnais

The Project: What Metals Make the Best Implants?

The Essential Question: “I experimented with five types of metal to see which would make the best implants in the human body. I conducted experiments placing each metal (lead, copper, nickel, zinc, titanium, aluminum) in a petri dish with saline solution and observing how they reacted. I also immersed pieces of the five metals in cow blood, which has some similar properties to human blood.”

Why I Pursued this Project: “I wanted to get a better understanding of how different metals would react in our bodies. I got the idea for my project after shadowing a Physician Assistant to a plastic surgeon at Trinity Health of New England and learning about the field.”