Sand. Salt. Iron. Copper. Oil. Lithium. These, not petabytes or algorithms or ideas, are the building blocks of human life as we know it. At least that’s what Ed Conway, author of Material World, tells us. And, without these basic materials, we couldn’t have much of anything else, certainly not petabytes of information or algorithms for manipulating them.
Materials science is the science of finding, extracting, refining, processing, and combining these. It is thus the fount of all technology and the sine qua non for our standard of living.
There are only two physical “things” in the universe — matter and energy. At this particular time in history, we’re focused on energy because we don’t have enough of it. The world’s energy output will have to triple by the end of this century to meet the demands of a still-growing population that gets wealthier (consumes more energy) every year.
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