ROYAL OAK – Lawrence Tech’s Sibrina Collins, PhD, decided to watch the movie “Black Panther” and was intrigued by the fictional element called vibranium, which in the movie displays amazing chemical and physical properties. A thought occurred to her: where would it go on the Periodic Table of the Elements?
Collins, executive director of LTU’s Marburger STEM Center, approached LaVetta Appleby, a senior lecturer in chemistry in LTU’s College of Arts and Sciences, about doing a paper on vibranium, “Black Panther, Vibranium, and the Periodic Table,” published June 5 in the online edition of the Journal of Chemical Education (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00206).
In “Black Panther,” the fictional African nation of Wakanda has a thriving science and technology-based economy thanks to the fictional metal vibranium. The movie describes vibranium as a metal that dissolves other metals, absorbs all sound, and causes genetic mutation.
To figure out where this astounding material would fit on the periodic table, Collins and Appleby asked for help from their undergraduate students – asking students as an essay question on an exam where they’d place vibranium on the periodic table, and explain why they made their choice.
Most students assigned vibranium the symbol Vb, since V is already in use by another metal, vanadium. Some noted the fact that it glows and causes mutations would place it near the most famous radioactive metal, uranium. An expert inorganic chemist, meanwhile, theorized it could be located in a group of elements called the boron family, a group of elements that can form elaborate structures, which could be sound-absorbing.
The paper received great traction on social media and LTU students who answered the question on the exam may now become ambassadors for high school chemistry classes to show how science and social media work together.
To listen to the rest of her story, click on https://soundcloud.com/internet-advisor-755109612/m2-techcast-episode-131-sabrina-collins-marburger-stem-ltu
