SANTA CRUZ -- Environmentalists have been up in arms about
PG&E's plans to use sound guns to map the of the Diablo Canyon
Power Plant in San Luis Obispo. Students at Spring Hill School
were troubled by the dilemma and set about finding a solution.
"When I heard about it, I thought, is that the only way they can
do it? What about other ways?" said fourth-grader Garrett
Estrada. Their science teacher, Aaron Clegg, was following
newspaper coverage when he realized it was a perfect opportunity
for the students in his fourth-, seventh- and eighth-grade
classes to learn about the challenges of marine science -- and
practice some creative problem solving. "When I heard about it,
I instantly started thinking about ideas of how we could fix
it," said Molly Sharfstein, another fourth-grader. The Diablo
Canyon nuclear reactor sits on the shoreline near several
seismically active faults. The Fukushima nuclear disaster that
followed the earthquake in Japan in March 2011 prompted PG&E to
step up its seismic sea floor mappi