David Holt – Some Rights Reserved
I finally got to see Black Panther! And I’m so glad I went. It was GREAT! So well done and the movie did a fantastic job of bringing the Black Panther characters to life. I’ve been a fan of the Black Panther superhero since I was reading comics growing up.
After watching the movie I was working with my 6th graders on one of the Lego Mindstorms STEM Robotics 101 challenges. Teams were tasked with making their robots perform a job incorporating height, mass, gravity, and velocity. Part of the process included redesigning and seeing how the redesign affected the robot’s job. Knowing that I had some students who rush through a challenge and go with their first design, I tried to impress upon them that the redesign was required. Afterall, engineering includes testing out designs, tweaking/improving, and testing again until you have a working product. In order to make my point, I found myself quoting a line from the Black Panther! 🙂
Minor spoiler: There was a scene early in the movie where the Black Panther, T’Challa, uses a piece of technology made by his sister Shuri. When he returns home from a mission Shuri asks T’Challa for the tech because she has some improvements that she wants to make. T’Challa tells Shuri that the tech is working just as it’s supposed to so why does she need to improve it. Shuri’s response:
“Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.”
That’s a perfect quote for those kids who rush through and want to complete an engineering challenge without even considering a redesign! 🙂
