Currently the Honors Biology class is studying ecology, which is the study of organisms and the environment.  This is such a big topic that it is often difficult to do labs in class.  For example, we can’t got visit an African savanna.  Our solution was to bring the outdoors in by creating model ecosystems.  Each student or pair created two ecosystems which were identical, except one contained a common pollutant and the other didn’t.  Students got to build their models from scratch and choose what went in them.  We’ll observe them over the coming weeks and study how the presence of modern pollutants can affect an entire ecosystem.