JAY – Some children were working on laptop computers while others tested robots their team built out of LEGOs or rehearsed their presentation for Monday’s community night at the middle school.

There are three middle school LEGO League teams of eight students who will compete on Saturday, Dec. 9, at Jay High School against 22 other schools in the Southern Maine LEGO League competition for a chance to compete at the state level and go onto the LEGO League International competition.

The Jay teams will first present their projects to the community at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4, at the middle school cafeteria.

Coach Rob Taylor shared his time with all the teams, Secret Ninjas, Fighting Nanobots, and Robo Monkeys, as he answered questions and gave advice to improve presentations after school Wednesday.

The kids have been working since the first week of school on Monday evenings and Wednesdays after school.

Each year the LEGO League International Competition chooses a theme and this year is nano-technology, Taylor said.

“It is the science of building devices that are incredibly small,” he said.

Nano means one-billionth, he added.

There are two parts to the project: the research and the robotics mission.

Team members have to research aspects of nano-technology to try to develop improvements or new uses, he said.

The Robo Monkeys are researching and developing body armor for police using nano-technology, Taylor said.

Secret Ninjas are working on a new kind of fabric, nanotex, that is treated at the molecular level and they want to take that technology and make a hair care product that’s stain, water and static resistant.

The Fighting Nanobots are using carbon nanotubes to cure emphysema.

In the robotics competition all the elements are on the LEGO table and they all represent real-world application of nano-technology, Taylor said.

They’ve all been given a mission to build, design and program a robot with a LEGO Mind Storm Kit that all competitors use.

This year, Jay has received support from the Gear-Up program at the University of Maine at Farmington as well as an assistant coach, Devon Henegar.

It was a challenge at first, Taylor said, to get the fifth- through eighth-grade students to understand the concept of nano-technology and get them to envision things on such a small scale.

Robo Monkeys members were gathered around the LEGO table running through a mission.

Erik Taylor, the coach’s son, said that their robot is designed to do two missions – one is to push a pizza molecule on to the face of the robot embedded in the table. Corey Ridley said the idea is so the robot can smell them, touch them and taste them.

In the second mission, Austin Couture said, the robot has to move a bucky ball from the base to a bone in the robot’s arm.

The bucky ball is made of little atoms, Scottie Hall said.

Erik Taylor said the ball is full of medication for chemotherapy to heal the robot’s cancer.

Over in a corner of the classroom, Bethany Moore, a member of the Secret Ninjas was working on a laptop doing research as team members hovered around.

“We’re going to make a hair spray or shampoo that would repel electricity and wetness so hair doesn’t get the frizzies,” she said.