Journey 2 was all about Electrons. Phase #1 of the Journey, taught us about Electron configuration and how that affects the element they are in. Something we learned that I thought would be difficult to understand is the subshell organization on the Periodic Table. In the end, I thought it was actually pretty easy to write down the configuration of each element because we had help arranging the Periodic Table into the "s", "p", and "d" subshells. I thought it was very interesting to learn how magnets work because it's the little things like that that we just accept without being curious as little kids. Also, in the battery-wire experiment, I thought it was great that we got to create our own designs and make a spinning piece of art, while also learning about what makes the wire spin.

The one thing I had trouble understanding was what was happening during the experiment with the magnet and the cardboard. We were told to measure the force that was needed to pull off the magnet from the attraction of the other magnet with a piece of cardboard in between. A day later, after the experiment, I finally understood that we weren't supposed to be finding an exact measurement of force that was needed, and instead we were supposed to be thinking about how the energy decreases the more subshells (cardboard pieces) are added. This corrolates to the idea that in PES readings the more subshells an element has, the less binding energy there is to keep its electrons in their places.