Is molybdenum key to the perfect sear on scallops? Type 316 stainless steel cookware provides unparalleled functionality for professional and amateur chefs alike. Pots, pans and other cooking products made with this alloy are both corrosion and high- temperature resistant. Molybdenum helps cookware to perform at the highest level for decades, even in industrial kitchens.

For most of human history, construction methods developed in response to the local climatic conditions. But in recent decades, the seemingly infinite availability of energy, labor and building materials led architects, developers and clients to overlook these time-tested techniques. A new plant in Vietnam revisits the region's traditional building methods and combines them with modern materials to create a spectacular and sustainable green wall made of molybdenum-containing stainless steel ropes and nets.

In a city where Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples abound, a Catholic cathedral is an unexpected sight. Nonetheless, Tokyo's St. Mary's Cathedral is one of the world's most famous churches. Designed in the early 1960s by master architect Kenzo Tange, its stainless steel-clad shape was ahead of its time – both in terms of its architecture and of the available technology of the day. To fix some of the resulting problems, the cathedral was re-clad after 40 years with a molybdenum-containing ferritic stainless steel certain to last a lifetime.

Imagine a sculpture that shapeshifts based on the viewer's position. Physicist- turned-sculptor Julian Voss-Andreae uses stainless steel to reflect insights from discoveries made in his former profession. His "disappearing" sculptures are a meditation on perception and reality, inspired by the study of quantum physics. Now molybdenum ensures they will never truly "disappear."

Mechanical watches rely on a tightly coiled strip known as a mainspring for power. Without the mainspring, these watches and other timekeeping devices like metronomes could not exist. The humble mainspring is exposed to great forces within the watch, necessitating uniquely hard materials with superior fatigue resistance. Today, most mainsprings are made of a specialty molybdenum-containing alloy.