One of the few things I actually remember from undergrad was a presentation freshman year where some famous person said "almost all major leaps in engineering a

One of the few things I actually remember from undergrad was a presentation freshman year where some famous person said "almost all major leaps in engineering ability come from one of three things: economics of scale, something else (maybe new algorithm? not sure), or a new material that simply has better properties". I don't want to be a materials scientist, but that line got me very interested in materials science and gave me a lot of respect for it. If you find a new material that is 3x better than any other in some way, that unlocks entirely new doors.