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...