4: Forces

This journey, "Forces", was all about learning how elements react to each other and why. It's interesting to learn how everything depends on the individual atom, like number of electrons/protons/neutrons, but we almost always measure things in extremely large amounts of atoms(moles). I love seeing how all the other Journies stack on top of each other and help us through the progressing ones. For example, if we hadn't learned how to draw Lewis Structures in a previous Journey, we'd have a tough time figuring out anything more complicated than that.

This experiment was probably the most interesting to me. I never really wondered how dry-erase markers worked, it was just sort of a non-exciting thing in my life that I never thought about. This lab, however, really sparked my interest. We watched a NAT GEO video that explained how it works. To put it simply, there is a release agent that comes out of the pen that sits on the surface. The resin/pigment then lays on top, and the two do not mix together. As one wipes the writing off the surface, the resin/pigment is erased, but the release agent remains. In this lab, we wrote on a plate with dry-erase markers and poured water on it, causing some of the letters to come off. This is caused by the polarity of the water.