The national anthem plays. The teams, wearing matching uniforms, are announced to a cheering crowd. The music starts pumping. It's your typical ... science fair?

It was the Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr.FLL) Expo Jan. 30 in Duffield Hall, where 18 teams of elementary school students from upstate New York displayed their science and technology research projects -- and their working LEGO models -- on such diverse topics as how luggage gets from a ticket counter to an airplane, how mail gets delivered and how amphibious vehicles move.

The expo was developed by FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FIRST is a nonprofit organization started in the early 1990s by Segway founder Dean Kamen. "Kamen got frustrated seeing kids get excited about sports heroes but not about scientists and engineers," said Dan Woodie, lab use manager for the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF), who organized the event.

FIRST has provided guidelines for middle and high school competitions around the country since the early 1990s. In 2002 the Jr.FLL was created for children ages 6-9, although it is not a competition at this level. "The whole idea is to get that sports atmosphere, that excitement, and show we can get excited about science and technology," Woodie said.

The teams build a LEGO model and make a poster that they present to a panel of reviewers at the expo. At Cornell's event, the panel comprised mostly staff and graduate students from CNF, which hosted the event.

The theme of this year's expo was Smart Move. Beginning last fall, the teams had to pick one thing -- anything -- and figure out how it gets from point A to point B. Teams from Ithaca, Trumansburg and Brighton, among other towns, presented their research.

The Rockin' Red Rapid Rockets from Victor Primary School in Victor, N.Y., picked chocolate.

"Our model shows how chocolate gets made, from the bean to the bar," said team member Grace Meisi. Teammate Lauren Osterdorf presented their poster, which showed how cocoa beans get to the Hershey factory.

Then Meisi demonstrated their LEGO model, as teammate Oriana Ireland explained, "There's a battery in it, and it moves the gears to move the box with the chocolate in it along the conveyor belt to the truck, which takes it out of the factory."

The girls agreed that working together and making new friends was the best part of participating. That, and they got to eat lots of chocolate.

The fourth annual Cornell Jr.FLL was sponsored by CNF and the Duffield Hall Nanotechnology Center, with volunteer support from the Cornell Society of Women Engineers.

Graduate student Sarah Perdue is a science writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.