Photo by Jenny Kirk A Jackson County Central student, left, along with two Murray County Central students, right, mix together different kinds of solutions at the Fun with Kitchen Chemistry session, joining more than 1,075 other K-8 students attending the 2017 Science and Nature Conference on Wednesday at Southwest Minnesota State University.

MARSHALL — Nearly 1,100 students had the opportunity to explore various topics throughout the day while attending the 23rd annual Science and Nature Conference on Wednesday at Southwest Minnesota State University.

The annual event is presented by Southwest West Central Service Cooperative and offers a unique opportunity for the K-8 students to learn about different aspects of science and nature.

“We had 1,078 students attending the conference this year, with about 400 adult chaperones from 24 schools and many individual parents from the region,” event coordinator Andrea Anderson said. “Everything went fabulously.”

Each of the students was allowed to attend three of the 37 available sessions, many of which were new this year.

“A few new topics this year are Skin Stapling and Angioplasty, I Want a Robot! Take Charge, Rain, Rain where do You Go? Ready, Set, Grow, Charge up you Career with Energy, Corn: an Amazing Plant and Food Science,” Anderson said. “Some of the outdoor sessions include: Rainfall Simulator, Farm Animals, Solar Panel, the Robot session and Mike Lynch’s Backyard Star Gazing.”

The day began with a keynote presentation by Steve Belliveau, who has been getting kids excited about science since 1994.

“He was very entertaining,” Anderson said. “He got everyone’s attention. It was fun.”

Belliveau’s show featured liquid nitrogen, giant hovercraft, human gyroscope, electric generators, electromagnets and elephant toothpaste.

“I like seeing lightbulbs go on with the kids when they get ideas in their heads and thinking that’s cool,” Belliveau said. “I like seeing them having fun, having them smile and understanding what is going on. It’s been fantastic here at the conference.”

Marshall Middle Schooler Gabe Sherman especially liked Belliveau’s presentation.

“I liked the pre-show with all the experiments,” Sherman said. “It was really fun. He did a lot of cool experiments.”

Sherman also attended John DeCramer’s I want a Robot! session.

“I enjoyed it,” Sherman said. “I thought it looked interesting. That’s why I signed up for it. It was a lot of fun.”

Marshall High School student Reed Schuerman helped present the sessions with DeCramer.

“I taught a little bit about the high school robotics team and I taught about block coding and some other things,” Schuerman said. “(Robotics) is just interesting. There are all sorts of things you can do. You learn as you go and it’s just fun.”

Garrett Hoppe, a third-grader at Clarkfield Area Charter School, thoroughly enjoyed the Take Charge! electricity session presented by East River Electric Power Cooperative’s Jennifer Gross.

“It was cool,” Hoppe said. “It takes a lot of watts to power the cheapest lightbulbs that you can find at the store.”

Hoppe had the opportunity to pedal a bicycle to make his own electricity.

“It was hard,” he said. “I had to power 200 watts. It was tiring.”

While he previously attended the Service Cooperative’s Young Writers Conference, this was Hoppe’s first time at the Science and Nature Conference.

“I went to the rocket one, too,” Hoppe said. “It was fun. I also went to a roller coaster engineering one (Rockin’ Rollercoasters presented by Washington Pavilion’s Lynne Jones), where you take pool noodles that have been cut in half and then you take tape and try to make a roller coaster with a marble. You have to make a loop and a turn.”

While Hoppe said he had a lot of fun, the roller coaster didn’t always work when they wanted it to.

“It worked every time she wasn’t videotaping it,” he said. “I think it was shy.”

Yellow Medicine East sixth-grader Hannah Stark said the conference was really fun.

“I’ve done new things every time,” she said. “I’ve never done any of them before. My favorite is probably the planetarium (Ken Murphy’s Extreme Stars session). That was a lot of fun.”

Stark also attended Fun with Kitchen Chemistry presented by SMSU’s Jay Brown.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Stark said. “I really like getting to mix things. I’ve never really learned too much about science, but I’m learning a lot more. We were mixing different kinds of solutions and learning what is acidic and what is basic.”

Stark said she’s come to the Science and Nature Conference a few times.

“It’s fun every year,” she said.

Third-graders Evea Powers (Marshall’s West Side) and Addison Kainz (Tracy Area Elementary) attended the So You Want to be a Veterinarian session presented by Brenda Evans of Evans Family Pet Care. Along with advice about how to check over an ailing animal, students had the opportunity to listen to their own heartbeat as well as that of Jett, a black lab.

“It sounded pretty slow,” Powers said about Jett’s heart rate.

Overall, Powers said the conference had been good.

“It’s pretty nice,” she said. “I learned about reptiles (Remarkable Reptiles session presented by James Gerholdt) and I learned about honey bees (Hands-on Honey Bees session by Lyon County Pheasants Forever representative Ron Prorok) — how they get the honey and how they make it.”

Kainz was curious about the stethoscope, asking Evans: “How can you tell if they are the front or back?” In addition to learning the answer, Kainz also gained insight during the other sessions she attended.

“I’ve been learning about exercising (I Live to Move it! session by SMSU’s Kris Cleveland) and making maple syrup (From Sap to Syrup session by Shetek’s Katie Chapman),” Kainz said.

Marshall Middle School seventh-grader Mitch Greenfield said the conference went “pretty good.”

“I learned about geocaching (Geo-Cache with GPS session presented by Jessie Hendrix from the Prairie Ecology Bus Center),” Greenfield said. “It’s been pretty good so far.”

Greenfield’s favorite session was Cryogenics: Amazing Science of the Ultra-Cold presented by 3M Visiting Wizards Jeff Payne and Chick Stanley.

“I learned how cold stuff affects things,” Greenfield said.

Lakeview fifth-grader Simon Gravely said the conference was “awesome.”

“My favorite was the geo ball,” Gravely said. “I also went to one of the energy things and the rockets. I like science, just learning about it.”

Some students played games and learned about farming from MHS FFA students Mary Sundquist, McKenzie Schultz and Brandon Karsten, Others learned about bison and horses — how early human captured them for food and art in a session by Nancy Dilley. Others heard about the mysteries of Egypt from Nancy Van Beek.

“It was very different living then,” Van Beek said. “There were no chairs in ancient Egypt. They also didn’t have forks or spoon — only knives. They didn’t even have clothes to wear. When they got to about 10 years old, they got a scarf, like a toga. But before that, nothing. They also lived in a mud house.”

Some students planted flowers, while others learned about different kinds of fish. Theresa McCoy taught students about building a raceway course in a session called Sphero Mazes.

Students could also learn about knots, electromagnetic interactions, food science, rocks and minerals and gross parts of nature. Many of them had the chance to be junior crime scene investigators, create sensational snake art or learn about the impact of rainfall on different landscapes.

“How fast does rain hit the earth?” presenter Brian Pfarr asked the students. “Correct. Twenty miles per hour. How many different types of worms are in Minnesota?”

Students took some guesses and eventually learned that Minnesota has 14 different kinds of worms, but in the world, there are roughly 7,000.

“All of the sessions were wonderful,” Anderson said.

Not all of the students could stomach touching the pig’s lung, which had been exposed to smoke. Benson’s Grace Nagler chose to just watch the lung, while schoolmate Tayte Antolick forced air into it.

“It’s kind of gross,” Nagler said. “It makes me want my dad to quit smoking.”