Three teams from the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District will participate in
Delaware's FIRST LEGO League (FLL)
State Champion's Tournament at the Bob Carpenter Center on Jan. 28. FLL is a
worldwide robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds started by Dean Kamen,
inventor of the Segway. FLL's mission is to get children excited about science,
engineering and technology while teaching them valuable employment and life
skills. The theme of this year's competition is "Food Factor -- Keeping
Food Safe" and FLL teams build, test and program an autonomous robot to
solve a set of food safety missions as well as research, develop and share
their innovative food safety solutions.

The three teams advancing to the State Champion's tournament
are:
• The Chef Bot-Ardees, who won the first place Champion's Trophy at the Oxford
High School qualifying tournament, comprised of sixth-graders Austin Hwa, CJ
McClure, Jonathan Nguyen, KC Simmons and Dev Singh from Charles F. Patton
Middle School and 4th grader Thomas McClure from Chadds Ford Elementary School;
•The Robotic Chargers, who placed third in the robot mission portion of the
competition at the Patton Middle School qualifying tournament, comprised of 6th
grader Andrew Binder from Charles F. Patton Middle School and 5th graders Anand
Raju, Joshua Binder, Kessler DuPont-Teevin, Liam Jackson and Mira Zutshi from
Chadds Ford Elementary School; and
• Team W.A.T.T.S. (We Advance Tomorrow's Technology Sooner) comprised of 7th
grader Sagar Maheshwari and 6th graders Margaret Clisham, Ryan Hastings, Chris
Jackson, Sean Sullivan and Eli Weisman from Charles F. Patton Middle School and
5th grader Joe Millman from Tower Hill School.

The
research component to the competition is equal to the robot missions and these
three teams used their ingenuity and vision to develop innovative food safety
solutions. The Chef Bot-Ardees researched the safety of beef storage in the
home and discovered that the public generally does not know what temperature
their refrigerator/freezer should be set to in order to keep their food safe
from the growth of dangerous bacteria (40 degrees F or below in the
refrigerator and 0 degrees F or below in the freezer). The home is the last
line of defense in food safety and to educate consumers about this important
issue, the Chef Bot-Ardees are working to amend the federal law governing the
Safe Food Handling Label that is on every package of beef, poultry and pork to
specifically state the proper refrigerator/freezer temperature. The team will
be testifying at a public meeting of the USDA in Washington, DC about their
research on January 31st. The Chef Bot-Ardees also wrote to all US refrigerator
manufacturers to urge them to change their manuals to include information about
food safety and they encourage all consumers to buy a small liquid crystal
thermometer (available at www.tiptemp.com) to put in their refrigerators so
they will know if their food is at a safe temperature, especially in the case
of a power outage.

The
Robotic Chargers researched the prevention of contamination of poultry by
campylobacter bacteria and proposed the creation of "Mr. FoodSafe," a
machine that sprays ions on the chicken. These ions get attracted to the
campylobacter bacteria through a positive/negative charge and are then
suctioned off using an ion vacuum. A thorough rinse cycle cleans the chicken of
any residues, leaving the chicken bacteria-free with no taste of texture
changes.

Team
W.A.T.T.S. researched how to protect food from being left at unsafe
temperatures for extended periods of time when refrigeration isn't available,
like at a picnic, family get-together or camping. Their proposed solution is the
"Smart Bowl" for items such as potato salad that should be kept below
40 degrees F. The bowl will change color from clear to red when it is left out
in the sun too long, alerting the owner that the food is the danger zone for
dangerous bacteria to grow.

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