Alden-Conger High School students are drawing some big attention when it comes to the world of science.

In April and May, seven of the school’s students will travel to Reno, Nev., or Houston to attend international science fairs.

The first fair, the International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering & Environment) Project Olympiad, will be April 15 through 20 in Houston. The I-SWEEP competition aims to raise youth awareness of the planet’s sustainability challenges and to encourage them to find workable solutions to those challenges, according to its Web site.

The second fair, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, will be May 10 through 15 in Reno, Nev. This fair is the largest international pre-college science competition that is attended each year by more than 1,500 high school students from more than 40 countries, according to the ISEF Web site.

Alden-Conger High School teacher David Bosma, who mentored the students for their projects, said he is proud of the students for all of their hard work.

“It is a reflection on this school that we produce some talented students,” Bosma said.

This is not the first year Alden-Conger students have found much success at science fairs.

Attending the I-SWEEP competition are Derek Drescher, David Troska, Lucas Kleinschodt, Trae Swehla, Amber Erickson, Shelby Little and Max Keller.

Attending the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair are Erickson and Little. Several are also attending the Minnesota State Science & Engineering Fair on March 29 through 31 in St. Paul.

The students conducted projects on topics such as compost energy production, biodegradable plastics and the susceptibility of alfalfa to petroleum, to name a few of the projects.

Many of the projects involved complex formulas, mathematics and physics.

Troska, who analyzed an H-shaped Darrieus wind turbine, built a vertical-axis wind turbine and tested it near a highway. He calculated the energy captured from a car and semitrailer, compared to his control — just the wind.

In the end, he calculated the maximum amount of money that could be saved by having those turbines near roads.

Troska said it took him about a week to build the turbine and to test it. Then, it took him another week to figure out equations to explain how it would be effective in society.

He came up with the idea after reading an article in Popular Science.

“Their idea was to put wind turbines over large interstates to produce energy, but I thought it would be more cost effective and practical to put them on the ground in the median of interstates to capture energy from both flows of traffic,” he said.

The project gave him the opportunity to build a wind turbine and to create energy, he said.

Erickson and Little tested the susceptibility of alfalfa to petroleum and then observed the effects different percentages of the solution had on the plant.

They said they came up with the idea for the project after seeing an article online that reported a petroleum spill in Bemidji. A pipeline had burst, and the petroleum leaked into the groundwater, creating a problem for farmers getting their crops to grow.

“After reading that, I guess it just got us curious and we wanted to know what the petroleum actually did to the plant,” they said. “Also we wanted to see how much petroleum the plant can actually withstand.”

The two students said they learned “a great deal about the plant structure and the behavior of plants.”