Forensics - Day 5

Forensics Day 4

To get into the forensic science mindset, students were led through a few warm-up activities. We started by testing our ability to detect when someone is lying by playing two truths and a lie, and then examining our short-term memory by compiling missing person descriptions about group members that had stepped out of the room. 

 To gain initial practice with forensic skills, students analyzed how blood splatter patterns differ depending on the tools used as well as other factors that lead to variation such as the angle, speed and force the individual uses. Students also examined the components that make up fingerprints such as arches, loops and whorls, and discussed how the arrangement and number of these features make our fingerprints one-of-a-kind. 

The majority of our morning session was dedicated to students applying their forensic skills by working through five lab stations. Students gathered evidence from each of the stations that pertained to a fictional crime in order to reach a conclusion. Stations included analyzing handwriting, blood typing, chromatography, fingerprinting and toxicology. 

Gift and Nut working at the toxicology lab station.

Sophia working at the blood typing station. 

To wrap up the morning, we watched a short episode of Forensic Files to prepare students for the afternoon when they would start planning and filming their own CSI video. 

Below are the two CSI videos students made today:

                                  Basketball Mystery Video:

                                  Robbing Roomies Video:

Forensics - Day 3

 Our new group today used part of the morning to complete a blood splatter analysis to analyze how three different tools can make different splatters of blood. We used paint and posters so we could trace the pattern. Then students were asked to deduce a pattern and figure out which tool it came from. 

Students continued with additional labs to work on their skills of solving a crime and had to come to a conclusion who committed the crime. To their disappoint, some of the labs left us to question which suspect it could be and more questioning would be needed to pin someone to the crime. 

Analyzing fingerprints.

Handwriting analysis

Toxicology analysis

Blood Analysis

Blood Analysis

Videos created by our groups:

Country Store Killer 

The Tragedy of Tim

Forensics - Day 2 New Group

 

With a new group of students, we went through a similar agenda but updated a few of the labs. Students worked in groups as they tried out their forensic skills to solve the murder mystery. 

Chromatography Lab to compare the pen on the note to the pen found at the crime scene. 

Nate determining blood types of victims.

Analyzing handwriting to tie a suspect to the crime. 

Comparing handwriting notes. 

Victoria making some observations of fingerprints.

Below are the Forensic movies created by the students. 

Hiker Mystery

Haunted House Murder

Forensics with the first group

 It was a great first day to bring the group together to solve a crime. The group started with a few warm-up games of 2 truths and a lie to test our ability to pick out when someone is lying, and then we tried our short-term memory by writing a description of a person in our group when they stepped out of the room. It proved to be difficult remembering characteristics to put together an image of a person. 

Students worked in small groups as they went through 5 lab stations to improve upon their forensic skills. The toxicology lab was a quick lab to analyze if the victim was poisoned using test strips to look for qualitative data. The chromatography lab was a challenge as we tried to compare the pen left at the crime scene to the pen that was used on the document written by the victim. Students analyzed fingerprints and tried to find similarities between those found at the crime scene to suspects. This took us awhile but we worked together to come up with an hypothesis. Students analyzed handwriting as a tool to tie the suspect to the crime scene. Lastly, a blood lab was conducted to analyze simulated blood types. 

We watched an episode of Forensic Files that tied in with our labs. The episode incorporated the importance of being able to analyze handwriting to tie a suspect to a crime scene. After lunch, students worked in groups to create their own CSI video. Students designed a crime story and then worked on filming their stories. We were able to share these at the end of our day. We had a good laugh watching each other's videos. 

Below are the videos:

Pete's Package

Forensics Mechanic Video

Project Week 2021 Labels 4