Upper Schoolers Get Hands-on in Their Science Labs
October 5, 2026
In the Upper School, hands-on investigations give students opportunities to test what they’ve learned, make observations, and see challenging concepts come to life.
In Bryce Carlson’s Advanced Placement biology class, students conducted a coffee extraction lab to better understand why cells evolved to be so small. They investigated how water diffuses through coffee grounds of different sizes and measured the total dissolved solids of the extracted (brewed) coffee.
Students observed that the finer ground coffee facilitates greater diffusion of water through the particles and greater extraction. Similarly, biological cells evolved to stay small because their high surface area-to-volume ratio facilitates the diffusion of nutrients into and around the cells and the ability of wastes to diffuse back out.
In Brian Berning’s biotechnology class, seniors extracted and isolated DNA from strawberries and their own cheek cells, allowing them to observe DNA from both plant and animal cells.
As one of the first labs of the year, it also introduced procedures and techniques students will build upon later in the course, including analyzing, modifying, and editing DNA for various biotechnology and genetic-engineering applications.
