Project introduction
Every day we are dependent on transportation in many ways. Every day you and your friends travel to school, to the places where they do sports, to visit friends and family. Every day we need clothes, food, water and medicine – all these travel over different ways. Many goods already completed a long journey when they arrive. They come from faraway countries and they travel across oceans, over mountains and deserts and along the streets we live on. Besides goods also information travels to us from experts, teachers, friends, and family. It comes to us by word-of-mouth, phone, in books, from websites, in text messages.

Now, consider: experts have developed an intelligent system in order that a potato chip can travel through a factory and finally arrive at a supermarket without being broken – but annually over 70.000 bikers are getting hurt by accidents in road traffic in Germany. Is all this travel as safe as it could be? Millions of people get stuck in traffic every day. Is all this travel as efficient as it could be?

Your challenge this season is to look at your living space and discover how people, animals, information and things travel. Once you know how people and things move in your living space, pick one main mode of transportation and do some research. What kinds of problems keep people and things from getting where they are going safely? What kind of problems keep people and things from moving efficiently, getting where they are going quickly and using the least amount of energy? How could your team help to solve one of those problems?

Part 1 - Identify a problem

Review how different transportation ways affect your living space. Choose one problem and find out how your environment deals with this problem.

Procceding:
:: Begin your project by describing your livingspace. Define a specific living space. It can be your school, your city, your country or the world. Point out the
characteristics of your living space.
:: Next, create a list of the ways people, animals, information, and things
move in, around, to, and through your living space.
:: Pick one way people and things move in your living space and learn more
about it. Whether your team chooses planes, boats, trains, cars, trucks, skateboards, rollerblades, bicycles, donkeys, llamas, camels, your feet … it’s
time to research.
:: Discuss different questions for example: What makes your mode of
transportation dangerous? What prevents people, information, animals, and
things from getting where they need to go? What makes them take longer?
What makes them burn more fuel?
:: Make use of different information sources (websites, books, reports, …)
:: Check with experts who work in and around your living space. (e.g.
policemen, drivers, transportation, energy and information scientists)
:: Be prepared to share your information sources. 

:: back

Part 2 - Create an innovative solution
Suggest a solution based on the collected information or improve a already existing solution. How will your solution help your living space? How can your solution help your environment and make transportation saver and easier. What will it take to make your team’s solution happen? 

Hint:
:: Be creative. Be silly. Be serious – maybe you will find a solution which seems so obvious that you wonder why the problem even exists.
:: Prove your solution on capableness and make eventually corrections.
:: Consider how you and your team can help to solve the problem.

Part 3 - Share with your community

Share your research and solution. The best ideas are not useful if nobody knows them. Tell the public about the problem you researched and show how your solution can help. At the tournament: You can choose how to share what you’ve learned. Create a website. Perform a skit. Make a comic book. Rap. Create a poster. Pass out flyers. Write a poem, song, or story.

Hint:
:: Follow the given steps: describe your living space, your chosen problem and your suggested solution.
:: Show that your team did the research and tell about your information sources.
:: Show how your team shared the results with someone outside of your team.

Additional information
The documents below provide various information and hints how to approach the FLL Research Project. Please use them to prepare your research presentation properly.