This year at Sunlake, sophomore Lorenzo Blanco has taken up the challenge of a marine science class. Although it is a lot of work, he is very passionate about researching the ocean. The rest of the class seems to be engaged with the learning material as well.  “So far we’ve learned about the past exploration of the ocean, as well as different oceanic structures,” Lorenzo explained. “We even had a unit about the Titanic which was pretty interesting, because I never really learned about the Titanic in school before.”

In the week of 9/18-9/22, the class was assigned a solo construction project. The students were told to build a model of the ocean floor using various different materials. Lorenzo chose to craft his project with Legos. “It was really fun being able to implement toys in a science project,” he said. “It took like 30 minutes to construct the model but around 3 hours to complete the other work that came with the project. We had to find the distance from the bottom of the ocean to the structure.” Lorenzo says that this project helped him better understand oceanic structures and how to calculate ocean depths. “There’s a good balance of math involved, but it can get a little bit confusing sometimes,” he explained.

Lorenzo moves forward in marine science with excitement. “I’m expecting a lot of projects, whether group or solo. But I’m excited because they’ve all been super fun so far,” he said. “We recently had a volcano project where we went outside with a partner and put a bunch of chemicals together, and then it lit on fire. It was crazy.”