Medical Forensics

Edmond Locard was known as the Sherlock Holmes of France. 

He formulated the basic principle of forensic science "Every contact leaves a trace" 

Students in the Medical Forensic class at the ALC tested to see if this was true.  Students brought to class a shirt they had worn the day before.  They then took packing tape and picked up what they could off their shirts.  Students then looked at what they had picked up the day before under the microscope. 

Students were amazed at what they picked up in a day.  Students also looked at ballistic evidence, lip prints, compared sand and rocks, and glass and plastic as well as matching tire prints. 

It was a good day to look at trace evidence.  

Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye.   

In Medical Forensics students learned how to use microscopes to see things we cannot see with the human eye. 

Students collected a bug of some sort and looked at the legs, eyes, wings, and many other bug body parts. 

Learning how to use the microscope was fun and interesting.  

#ALCBeCurious #ALC #ExploreDiscoverCreate #NeboSchoolDistrict #EngageStudents#UVU#ALCAviation#ALCMedicalForensics

Students in Medical Forensics had a great time learning about blood spatter and then creating their own blood spatter.   

Students picked two types of spatter that they wanted to create.  Students had to figure out what instruments they would need to make the spatter look realistic.

The creative minds of these students is awesome.  In the second part of the lab students from another class had to decipher the blood spatter created.  Students had to figure out the angle of impact, lines of convergence, direction blood was traveling, and what type of blood spatter was present. 

Students had a great time making and analyzing  blood spatter.

Congratulations to Ally Young and Emily Morril for taking 1st place in Forensic Science at the Science Olympiad in Cedar City this past Saturday, April 9, 2022. 

Ally compared this event to a track meet.  She said that students choose three areas to compete in, and students then answer questions related to that area. 

In Forensic Science students were asked to analyze a crime scene, students were given a list of suspects that went with the crime scene and they had to determine who the criminal was. 

A young man was found dead in front of his TV. A variety of white pills surrounded the table next to him.  Did a doctor prescribe these drugs?  Are these over-the-counter drugs?  Did the person use illegal drugs?.  Before performing more complex confirmatory testing to identify the components of any drug forensic toxicologists perform presumptive color spot testing.  Spot tests rapidly show results to indicate the possibility that certain drugs are present.  

Students in Medical Forensics were given a variety of drugs.  One of the drugs was unknown.  Students did a color spot test to identify the unknown drug.  Were they successful?  Join Medical Forensics to find out.  

A murder victim was discovered along a roadside.  Police recovered carpet samples from the victim’s body.  It is speculated that the victim was brought to the location using a car belonging to one of the suspects.  Some of the carpet fibers from the floor of the car were transferred to the victim’s body.  Your task is to determine if the fiber found on the victim’s body is consistent with one of the carpet fibers taken from the cars of four different suspects.  

 Besides color,  did you know that hair is very different from one person to the next?

Hair can be used as forensics class evidence because of its unique characteristics.

Students in the ALC Medical Forensics class studied human hair and a variety of animal hairs.

Students found out that animal hair is very different from human hair, and that each animal's hair is very different from the previous animal.

It was interesting to see the difference for these students.

What do you do when you learn how to collect evidence?  Have a mock crime scene of course.  Students at the ALC had the opportunity to look for evidence at four different crime scenes.   Students have divided into teams each team member had a specific job to accomplish such as the first responder, evidence collector, photographer, and recorder.

  Students collected evidence, bagged the evidence, and photographed evidence.  Each group then reconstructed the crime scene from the evidence. 

Evidence tells the story and these students figured out what the story was. 

Students loved that this activity was hands-on and gave them the opportunity to practice what they had learned in class. 

Edmond Locard said that there is always something left at a crime scene and something is taken away.  This is called trace evidence.  Medical Forensic students looked at a small portion of trace evidence in today's class.  Students did a packing tab lab.  Students put tape on the bottom of their shoes and looked at the tape under a microscope.  What did they pick up?  Something from everywhere they have been this morning. 

Next students looked at lip prints, and tire tracks, could students match the tread with the tire, could they match the lip prints with the correct lip prints?  Other students looked at bullet casings, and others compared them to glass and plastic. 

Have you ever wondered what a bug looks like magnified? Today in Medical Forensics students learned to use microscopes to see just that. 

They learned to use their microscope by looking at bugs.  Wings, legs, bodies, heads, and eyes. 

Bugs were brought in by students and then the students chose which body part they wanted to look at and prepared a slide for the microscope.  The bug was viewed on three different magnifications, and students took pictures and were asked to draw what they saw.