This issue of SSR features not only the main theme marking the International Year of the Periodic Table but also more articles based on sessions at the 2019 ASE Annual Conference covering topics as diverse as sciencc using sweets and a chemical escape room.  2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table, being 150 years since the generally accepted discovery of the periodic system for classifying the elements by Dmitry Mendeleev. The periodic table is clearly utterly fundamental to science in general and chemistry in particular, and yet, if there was ever a scientific artefact that hides in plain sight so much that we almost grow to see through it, it is the standard class­room wallchart periodic table.