Cyndi Loza

From blueberry-flavored envelopes to waterproof school clothes, hundreds of Western Nevada students are showcasing their inventions and experiments this weekend.

More than 1,500 students in K-12 competed this week in this year’s Western Nevada Regional Science & Engineering Fair and the Lemelson Young Inventors Challenge. Their projects will be on display through noon today at the Lawlor Events Center.

Participants come from more than 100 public and private schools throughout the western part of the state. Home-schooled students also are taking part.

“I think this is a great opportunity for kids to start thinking,” said parent LaResa Darrington, 43, of Yerington. “They look around and see problems and get their brains thinking on how to solve those problems.”

Each child picked out his or her favorite projects, wrote down what questions each project was trying to answer, the hypotheses, materials used, procedures followed, the results and what they liked about it.

Darrington’s daughter, Corie Darrington, centered her experiment, “The Chocolate Touch,” on answering which chocolate chip brands worked best on a pretzel.

“Whenever we made pretzels, the sprinkles would come off,” said Corrie, 10, a fifth-grader at Yerington Intermediate School. “So, I thought I’d find out what chocolate sprinkles hold on the best.”

She found Ghirardelli chocolate chips worked the best.

The high school students faced more difficult scientific challenges.

“It takes a long time to put together all these projects, so it’s a very tough field,” said Chris Heslop, 17, who placed second in environmental science.

The home-schooled student from Incline Village studied the environmental effects of the water in Death Valley National Park.

Returning this year is Heslop’s sister, Joanne, with her three-year project, “Exhaling CO2, Year 3.”

“Each year, my project has taken a different focus,” Joanne said. “This year is my first year working with the wildfires.”

She said she studied the effects wildfires had on the rate carbon dioxide is released from the soil.

She placed first in overall individual project and environmental science in the high school division.

As a winner, she will have an all expenses-paid trip to Atlanta for the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair in May. She will join students from more than 50 nations to compete for more than $4 million in scholarships.

“I’m really excited to go,” Heslop said. “You get to meet scientists and competitors of all over the world, and you get see what they’re doing in that part of the world.”