News

The Environmental Science class took advantage of the beautiful weather last week to work on identifying native trees in the CHS yard and sketch in their field journals.

The Environmental Science class visited Carvin Creek to place experimental leaf pack bags in the stream. They will use the data from the collection to assess stream quality and learn about habitat characteristics for these captured little critters.

The Environmental Science class took their first field trip of the semester to Mill Mountain to practice using their field journals as they identified the species they found.

As part of their Environmental Studies class, Zora D was inspired to research questions and challenges surrounding recycling practices “after observing the chaotic contents of recycling bins in our building and a correspondingly chaotic understanding in myself and my peers of how recycling actually works.” Zora’s end goal after learning about how our waste is […]

The Roanoke Field Studies class took a trip to Community School and spoke with Davey Stewards, of Harvest Collective and Star City Compost, who gave them a demo of their compost trailer currently housed there.

Our Roanoke Field Studies students toured the Crystal Spring Water Treatment Plant and Snow Steam Pump thanks to Sarah Baumgardner of the Western Virginia Water Authority.

Roanoke Field Studies students took a trip to the new location of Garden Variety Harvests at Lick Run Farm. The group met with founding farmer, Cam Terry, and learned about what it takes to start and run an urban farming business on land held in agricultural conservation by the Southwest Virginia Agrarian Commons.

NASA’s motto in exoplanet research is “Follow the water,” because liquid water is the best indication we have that a planet might be habitable. The Chemistry lab students were tasked with testing samples from the “latest NASA mission” to figure out which (if any!) of the clear liquids they tested was water. They spent several days […]

There is nothing quite like a “Homer-o-stasis” lab. For this homeostasis lab our Biology students had to keep their Homer Simpson alive for five minutes. This involved keep his temperature, water level, and yellowness steady, even though water was pouring out of the bottom of Homer’s cup.

The Roanoke Studies students tested different shapes for wind blades in an attempt to improve performance.

How would you try to protect a strain of yeast that was particularly sensitive to UV light? Our Biology students designed their own experiments to compare methods.  Is expired sunscreen okay? Would sunglasses work? How effective is UV blocking clothing? Would aloe vera provide the same protection as a sunscreen formula? Will spray sunscreen protect […]

Students in the Roanoke Field Studies class visited Roanoke Catholic School to visit their solar panel arrays. After returning to school, they went up to the roof to see if the CHS roof would be suitable for solar panels.

Physics students were treated to a sweet experiment.  They carefully began to melt chocolate bars in microwaves to calculate the speed of light using the distance between the melted spots and the frequency of the microwave.

As part of learning about primate anatomy in the Human Origins class, students attempted walking on their knuckles like gorillas, hanging from one arm like gibbons, walking on their palms like baboons, squatting like monkeys, and walking bipedally like chimps.