Concrete and steel are both amazing substances, but only when the steel is enmeshed in the concrete do they turn into the ultimate building material. Batteries are just as reliant on copper as they are on the lithium inside them. Lightbulbs are useless without glass. You cannot have a transformer without a core of silicon steel or copper wires wound around it—and without transformers, the most unappreciated of all innovations, our electrical grids would collapse.
