The Project

Hey guys!

It has been a while but now we will try to post weekly. So our topic this year is food factor and we have to find ways that our food gets contaminated and ways to stop it. We chose to do PCB contamination in salmon. It is not a life-threatening situation (thank god or else we'd all be dead by now except for those lucky vegetarians). But it is still very bad as it can cause problems for pregnant women and their children. Okay I just realised how ahead of myself I got. Sorry especially for those of you scratching your head cause you have no idea what PCBs are.

PCBs are polychlorinated biphenyls. They are a class of organic compounds. PCB's are by nature fat soluble, persistant and heat resistant. In 1977 their usage was banned due to their harmful qualities. But a significant amount still remains in the air and in older equipment still in use. Recent studies show that the PCBs dissolve into the fat of fish like salmon and get into us when we eat the salmon!

FLL Food Factor 2011

Hey Guys!

We are the TechBenders! We are a team that is participating in the FLL (First Lego League). The FLL is an organization that organizes tournaments for kids doing robotics that age from 9 to 14 years old. Their special mission is to get kids excited on science and technology. FLL can be used in a classroom setting but is not solely designed for this purpose. Teams, composed of up to ten children with at least one adult coach, can also be associated with a pre-existing club or organization, homeschooled, or just be a group of friends who wish to do something awesome. Our team consists of 6 kids who are Adithya a.k.a. Adi, Swathi, Rohan, Malu, Vignesh, and Akhilesh a.k.a. Akhi. Our coach is Mr. Kumar and our mentor/co-coach is Mrs. Srinivasan. This blog is designed to publish our team's research findings on various research topics we will be doing as part of FLL team requirements in the years to come. This year the theme is Food Factor.

Food Factor is about studying and researching food and seeing how it is contaminated during its food journey from it's birth or production to your table/a picnic/a restaurant. During this year we are researching PCB contamination in farmed salmon. As a matter of fact, we did not actually start on our current decided topic. We started of with the whole food pyramid but then went from Mad Cow Disease to RBGH/Growth Hormones to mercury in fish and finally PCBs in farmed salmon. This subject led to us talking to a PCB researcher in Kentucky University, the Edison Health Educator, the Wegmans Seafood Manager, and a worker at the Wegmans seafood counter...