Bloomingdale Yearbook

This Tuesday, Mrs. Diane Huber’s Biology 1 Honors classes took a mini field trip to the biodome behind the baseball field. Their mission? To nurture and plant Spartina alterniflora sea grass that they would move to the beach later on and plant in order to help protect the sandy seashore and the animals on it. The grass blades would provide shelter for a large number of critters, and act as a barrier to keep the beaches from erosion. The students worked hard, planting the grasses into small cups with holes and filled them with nutrient rich soil to get the plants started on growing towards adulthood.

“The day went very well,” said the teacher, Mrs. Huber.”Roughly several thousand Spartina alterniflora plugs were planted.”

Freshman Mitch Moreland also thought the trip ran smoothly.

“It went pretty well. All the people planted the [plants],” he said.

The eco-friendly excursion helped students learn more about biology and was a great way to help out the environment, one grass plug at a time.

How many people have ever gotten the chance to launch a catapult? Students in Mrs. Modica’s physics classes were assigned a project where they got to build some and do just that. 

The project was to build a catapult that was one cubic foot in volume and use it to successfully hit a certain target. The designers were almost completely unrestricted, free to use any materials they chose, such as paper towel rolls, wood, or wire. The only limitation, however, was that power had to be supplied by rubber bands alone. The catapults were not permitted to have electricity, motors, or anything else to provide force. The groups all had to have their creations ready by Thursday, October 29th.

One student in the class, junior Sarah Avery, says “It seems like it should be fun. We’re having a competition, and I’m excited about it. Whoever wins gets extra credit.”

A freshman from Newpoint High School, Carissa Hoffman, commented, “I think it’s a really unique project. It would be cool to try to do that, but it sounds really hard.”