Teams explore an actual problem that today's scientists and engineers are trying to solve, develop an innovative solution to that problem, and share their findings.
Your Project challenge this season is to investigate your food and find one way to improve its safe delivery to you. Some questions to consider while you investigate include: Where does your food come from? How is it grown? Where has it been? Who handled it? How did it get to your kitchen cupboard? Who protected it along the way? How did they prevent spoiling and contamination? How did they decide which food was good and which was spoiled or contaminated? Once you know about the threats your food faces and who helps protect it, do some research. What could go wrong? How could your food become contaminated or spoiled? How could your team help prevent one of those problems? How could your team protect or preserve your food?
As a Team―— After you learn about your food’s journey from ground to table, search out how and where your food could become spoiled or contaminated. Choose one problem that your food faces and research it. Your team’s challenge is to create an innovative solution that prevents or solves the problem your team chooses. Once your team has decided on a contamination or spoiling problem, develop an innovative solution that will address the problem—a new idea or an improvement on something already being done. What is already being done to fix your team’s problem? What could be done? What will it take to make your team’s solution happen? How will your solution help protect your food? A great solution might take all the imagination and ingenuity your team can muster. It might seem so obvious that you wonder why the problem even exists.
Team 4526 - The Crawdaddies (St. George's Episcopal, New Orleans)
The Crawdaddies Robotics Team wrote a news broadcast skit, ending with a song in the spirit of the television show GLEE to showcase how temperature affects food quality and supports food safety. Within the news broadcast, our on-the-street-reporter reported live from a Mardi Gras route to introduce our team's innovative ideas. This character suggested that we use Mardi Gras cup "throws" with temperature sensitive color changing technology as an effective prevention of spoiling drinks such as milk. We also toted a paper thermometer "throw" that parade goers could catch from floats and then stick to the outside of a gumbo pot and easily manage the food that people depend on for long days of parade going. Our final song in the skit incorporated lyrics that related to food safety driving home key temperatures for food safety.
We also solved the mystery embedded on the game board. Numbers around the timer represented different temperatures. The numbers zero, 32, 100, and 212 represented the boiling and freezing point of Celsius and Fahrenheit scales; key marks for maintaining food safety. The Kelvin units of temperature were represented as well. With temperatures stressed on the game board, it made our decision to concentrate on safe food temperatures an easier one for our topic of the presentation.
Team 6101 - Robostars (Bonne Ecole Elementary, Slidell)
The Robostars chose milk for our Food Factor challenge because milk is a main food in our daily diet and used in many products that we consume. We visited the LSU Dairy and noticed that contamintion in the form of bacteria is a big problem in milk production and safety. We also visited the LSU Creamery and learned how they pasteurize the milk and make it into ice cream and cheese. We also visited Chef John Folse Bittersweet Plantation Dairy to learn about cheese making. Our team envisioned the use of MEMS technology to create a nanobot to be injected into the cow's udder. It could be used to monitor body temperature, salinity levels, ph levels, and the texture of the milk to indicate the presence of bacteria.
Team 6106 - 5 Second Rule (Boyet Junior High School, Slidell)
Our project is on how rat poisons kill people as well as rats. This idea was thought up because we found a story of how three children in Peru died because of rat poison and the food they ate. Our solution is a way to kill rats without using poison to get rid of people ingesting rat poison. We have cooperating robots that find and then process a rat.
Team 6716 - Robot Rocker (Little Oak Elementary, Slidell)
Mr. Brit, a chef from Olive Garden, came to our class and taught us about the "Danger Zone" which is 41 to 141 degrees F. He taught us how impartant it is to keep food out of these temperatures. Mrs. Farrell, our Cafeteria Manager, hoped we could find a way to keep hot food hot and cold food cold. Our solution is to use our invention, the ROCK Pot (Rapidly Occurring Cooling/Heating Kettle). The ROCK Pot uses liquid nitrogen to cool and hot water or heating coils to heat. It also has a centrifugal force feature to increase surface area. 6 out of 7 food establishments interviewed said they would be interested in our invention.
Team 12756 - Acme Oyster Team (Christ Episcopal School, Covington)
We have created a machine to kill oyster vibrio. We have shown on our boad that it is one of the biggest seafood problems! We have cured it by sending it on a conveyor belt througha box with an infrared light.
