Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013 - (Page 34)

FIRST LEGO League’s Global Innovation Awards One day in my seventh grade science class, one of my best friends was recounting her experiences in FIRST LEGO League (FLL), a program in which teams of students build an autonomous robot and find solutions to problems based on an annual theme. Ananya’s team had been invited to represent our state of Ohio in the seasonculminating FLL World Festival. As Ananya described how much fun she and her team had building and programming their robot and traveling to St. Louis to present their project, I thought how amazing it would be to do something like that. So when she invited me to be the tenth member of her team the following year, I agreed. 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases annually. We wanted to reduce this number. We began by analyzing a recipe for a popular dish: chili. To determine where contamination might occur, we researched every step the food goes through, from ground to table. We visited a farm, contacted the food safety manager of a grocery store, and spoke with the owners of a bed and breakfast. Each team member was assigned a particular area of research. I investigated the steps involved in beef processing. I learned that from the time the cattle are slaughtered until the meat reaches stores, it undergoes dozens of steps—meaning dozens of opportunities for contamination to occur. Innovation in The Challenge The FLL challenge includes three parts: participating in robot games, demonstrating each team’s core values, and presenting a solution to a theme-based problem. To begin, teams of students in grades four through eight build and program an autonomous robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS. During competition, the robot performs a variety of tasks on a board, the design of which changes annually. Tasks might include lowering the temperature on a LEGO “thermometer,” or moving LEGO fish from one area to another. We built and practiced running our robot and designed attachments to improve its efficiency in completing tasks. At practices, our team members overflowed with ideas and talked over one another to express them. But during competition, in order to assess teams’ core values, the judges would observe as each team completed an assigned task, looking to see how teams interacted with others, as well as how individual team members cooperated with one another. We had to learn to incorporate everyone’s ideas and work together as a team. The Erasable Barcode Because exposing food to unsafe temperatures over time promotes bacterial growth, we sought ways to measure and maintain the temperature of food. We came up with an idea for a device that would measure how long food is exposed to unsafe temperatures and indicate whether it’s safe to eat. If food were exposed to elevated temperatures for a specified period of time— depending on the particular food—the device would disable the barcode on the packaging so the item couldn’t be checked out at the register. We called it the Erasable Barcode. Here’s how it would work: If temperatures were high enough to support bacterial growth, ink would begin to flow from a chamber into a tube. After a set amount of time, the ink would reach the end of the tube and flow into a second chamber, where it would cover the end of the barcode so it couldn’t be scanned. At the same time, the ink would cover a barcode digit, preventing the cashier from manually entering the barcode. When the food is packaged, the device would bear the word “SAFE”; as the ink flowed into the second chamber, it would change to “UNSAFE.” For the competition, we demonstrated how the Erasable Barcode would monitor the temperature of ground beef. Since bacteria double every 20 minutes on beef, the ink would be allotted two hours to flow, after which there’s a high probability that the beef is capable of transmitting food-borne illness. During local and then state competitions, we gave a five-minute presentation about our idea. While we weren’t required to have a prototype of The Food Factor In the final segment of the challenge, teams seek innovative solutions to problems related to an annual theme. For the Food Factor theme, we examined problems faced by the food industry, such as food spoilage and maintaining safe food preparation surfaces. In our research, we were shocked to learn how many people are affected by food-borne illness. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that one in six Americans—that’s 48 million people—gets sick, 34 imagine Jan/Feb 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
The Week I Turned Green
No Turning Back
Landsat: A Continuing Legacy of Earth Observation
Sensing Danger
The Black Gold Miners
Cleaner Water, Brought to You by Sunlight and Science
Journey to the Frozen Continent
CTY Paleobiology
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Innovation in the Real World
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2013