Fingerprinting with powders and chemical processing are only some of the new things students are now able to do with the new forensics lab on the Diamond Bar High School campus.

The  new lab allows students to carry out textbook exercises themselves, which was impossible in the regular classroom.

“I feel more students will be interested, and I will offer students a truer form of what forensics science is about, not only from a lecturer’s standpoint, but from a lab,” forensic science teacher Leonard Romero said.

Romero was first notified of the plans for a new lab room in the fall semester of 2015 by Instructional Dean Gabriel Aguilar.

“I was excited, it was a total surprise and shock and I didn’t realize how large the facility was,” Romero said. “ I couldn’t even imagine something that large.”

The new lab has been in construction since last year and was open to students in October.

The lab is located in room 266, next to Romero’s classroom, allowing students easy access between the two.

The room was once the graphics design room, with the class being discontinued.

The forensics lab currently has new cabinetry, chemical resistant countertops, sinks and a mock crime scene area that holds the hints to the crime.

Romero held the first hands-on lab on glass analysis at the end of October and has already ordered equipment to hold future labs and expand on the current curriculum.

“The new lab allows me to go ahead and do all those practical exercises that we learned about in the lecture,” Romero said. “ It allows the students to have a hands on [approach] as to the methods and techniques used by forensics science just in analyzing physical evidence.”