Biodiesel from start to finish…. That’s what Kelly Lewis’s bioscience seniors worked on in their first full week back at school. Lewis teaches the Bioscience program for Eastland-Fairfield Career and Technical School at a satellite location in Gahanna-Jefferson High School. Her students went through the process of making and testing their own biodiesel.

It’s been a challenging school year, with times of distance learning and hybrid learning, resulting in a variety of obstacles to a lab-based science class. However, the students said that Lewis rearranged some course content, allowing them to focus on their capstone projects during the distance and hybrid times.

Now they’re back, and with just a few months till graduation, they began with a week-long biofuel lab. The timeline: write the lab on Monday, prep the biofuel on Tuesday, wash it on Wednesday, and test the fuel in pop-pop boats on Friday. The following week, the students will be tasked with doing it again, this time using a non-soy oil.

Try this lab with your students! Everyone enjoys the boat races at the end!