Aluminum

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in Earth's crust, but it is locked so tightly to oxygen that it was once a costly rarity. Today it is refined from bauxite ore into alumina, then split with huge electric currents in the Hall–Héroult process, which uses a lot of electricity. A thin oxide skin forms on its surface instantly and protects it from corrosion.

Light, conductive and easy to shape, aluminum is all over the television. It is most of the aluminum alloy in the heat sink, forms the foils and can of each electrolytic capacitor, and combines with oxygen to make aluminum oxide, used in glass and as the sapphire the LED chips are grown on.