Dear Colleagues,

We have published a letter entitled "Black Panther, Vibranium and the Periodic Table," in the Journal of Chemical Education. Honestly, while I watched the movie Black Panther, which I REALLY enjoyed, I thought to myself the following question--if vibranium really existed, where would it belong in the periodic table? So, I convinced a chemistry colleague to ask this question on an exam, and the student responses were amazing. We have received great positive feedback on Twitter, with chemistry faculty suggesting other topics, Irving-William Series, radioactive decay rates, and material science concepts. We were simply leveraging the popularity of a movie to get students to think critically and seriously about the periodic table. Furthermore, we also noted that the movie Black Panther provides a unique platform to discuss the important contributions of women and people of color to the STEM disciplines. I hope you can use this as a first-day activity for your inorganic students to get them to review the periodic table as an ice-breaker. The article  can be found at the following link.

Black Panther, Vibranium and the Periodic Table 

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00206

Sibrina