Material

From AdCiv

Intro

Air, water and the twenty most abundant elements in the Earth's crust provide almost all the material needed to create the multitude of machines and goods that mankind requires: food, drugs, houses, vehicles, robots, industrial machinery, computers, consumer goods and so on.

Extracting these plentiful elements (and their compounds) to create useful material in essence involves energy (which is also plentiful) and the right processing methods. From a technical point of view there is practically no limit to the volume of material we could extract and make use of, if we so wished, even well away from the fragile skin of life on Earth. The reserves of raw materials needed to sustain civilisation are simply not going to run out because the entire Earth's crust is made up of them – although this is no excuse to be unnecessarily wasteful in our consumption. The point is that any existing material scarcity actually has little to do with the reserves at our disposal.

Fossil fuel is a limited resource, many would argue, but with regard to energy there are vastly more plentiful and greener energy sources available; and as a feedstock for plastics and many other useful petrochemical derived materials, renewable biomass

can replace crude oil if necessary or even organic synthesis

. Our current heavy use of fossil fuel is due to convenience and the fact that current economics make the alternatives appear less viable in comparison. However 'economics' distorts the perception of what is possible and simply dictates what is easier when working within the current framework that we have inherited from times past.

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Sections

Main Page > Fundamental resources > Material

1 Intro
2 Sections
3 Twenty most abundant elements in Earth's crust
4 Constituent elements of seawater
5 Constituent elements of air
6 See also

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Twenty most abundant elements in Earth's crust

Approx figures for the 20 most abundant elements in Earth's crust:

Element	% mass
Oxygen	46.71
Silicon	27.69
Aluminum	8.07
Iron	5.05
Calcium	3.65
Sodium	2.75
Potassium	2.58
Magnesium	2.08
Titanium	0.62
Hydrogen	0.14
Phosphorus	0.13
Carbon	0.09
Manganese	0.09
Sulfur	0.05
Barium	0.05
Chlorine	0.05
Chromium	0.04
Fluorine	0.03
Zirconium	0.03
Nickel	0.02

Figures from [1]
Figures rounded to two decimal places
Also need to have a list based on ease of extraction and energy required

Noticeable missing from top 20:

Copper.
Carbon might replace copper for many electrical conduction applications, and in the right form has the potential to be an even more efficient conductor - see carbon nanotube

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