Robert Barker/University Photography

Yajaira Sierra, a reviewer for the 6th annual Junior FIRST LEGO League in Duffield Hall Atrium, works with team members from Northside Lego club, 9-year-old Dymond Pyne, center, and 6-year-old Tashawn Pyne, right.

After working for months on their LEGO creations for the 2011 Snack Attack Challenge, scores of 6- to 9-year-olds showed off their teams' LEGO creations depicting solutions to food safety concerns at the sixth annual Junior FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League Expo at Cornell's Duffield Hall atrium, Jan. 28.

This is the sixth year that Cornell's NanoScale Facility has organized and hosted the Expo, for which elementary school student teams conducted research and developed LEGO models with a motorized moving part and posters. At the expo, the children from Ithaca, Binghamton, Rochester and beyond presented their work and explained to reviewers -- Cornell NanoScale Facility researchers and staff -- how they worked as teams.

Robert Barker/University Photography

Geoffrey Clark, 10, a member of the Mini Fingers team from Ithaca, works with the team's LEGO display.

More than 12,000 youngsters from four other countries also participated in this year's Junior FIRST LEGO League challenge. Teams were asked to take a "hands-on" approach to food safety by exploring how proper preparation and storage can help keep us healthy.

The junior league is a spinoff of the FIRST LEGO League, which is for older children. Each year, the FIRST organization releases a science-themed challenge for the teams. Teams are formed by teachers, coaches, parents or other mentors who want to encourage children in science and technology, with the fun of building with LEGOs.

FIRST, a nonprofit founded by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, has developed the challenges for organizations like Cornell to run.

The event at Cornell was in funded in part by the Shell Corp.