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Spring students solve murder mystery, ‘CSI’ style
  
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By KEVIN KOLOIAN
In a scene out of CSI: Spring, Twin Creeks Middle School students solved the mystery of who killed Mr. Boddy.
The group of eighth graders immersed themselves in a field experience at the SMART Center, located inside Carl Wunsche Sr. High School, on November 14 that required them to call on their book smarts and technical savvy in the name justice.
Assuming the role of crime scene investigators for the day, students collected, processed and analyzed evidence from seven ”crime lab” stations including bullet trajectory, ballistics, blood typing, ink chromatography, hair analysis, fingerprinting and DNA.
“I enjoyed the station using bullet trajectory data to figure out which suspect could have fired the handgun based on the suspect’s height,” said student Heather Maze.
The students learned that problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork are key aspects of police work while flexing their science and math muscles in a real world type of setting.
The field experience focused on the integration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content areas.
Thirty-one students broke up into teams and then collaborated to solve the mystery of the death of Mr. Boddy.
“It was fun because we were doing hands-on activities and not sitting in a desk at school,” Summer Froberg.
To process ballistics evidence students examined the rifling marks on bullets fired at the Houston Police Department crime lab, and then matched the marks to the bullet at the crime scene.
Using simulated blood, students determined the blood type of the “blood sample” left at the crime scene.
They used measurements and graphing to determine the height of the suspect that fired the weapon at the bullet trajectory station.
For the all-important fingerprint findings, students used magnetic powder to lift a fingerprint, and matched it to each of the suspects.
The mini-investigators matched the DNA profile of the crime scene blood to the suspects.
By microscopically examining hair samples left at the crime scene, students were able to match or disqualify each of the suspects.
And to determine the color pigments in suspect pens, they matched the resulting chromatograms to the ink on the note left at the crime scene.
The long day of work gave students a new found appreciation for the boys in blue.
“I now know what forensic scientists do everyday at work. It was really fun,” said student Nate Roy.
The group of eighth graders immersed themselves in a field experience at the SMART Center, located inside Carl Wunsche Sr. High School, on November 14 that required them to call on their book smarts and technical savvy in the name justice.
Assuming the role of crime scene investigators for the day, students collected, processed and analyzed evidence from seven ”crime lab” stations including bullet trajectory, ballistics, blood typing, ink chromatography, hair analysis, fingerprinting and DNA.
“I enjoyed the station using bullet trajectory data to figure out which suspect could have fired the handgun based on the suspect’s height,” said student Heather Maze.
The students learned that problem solving, critical thinking and teamwork are key aspects of police work while flexing their science and math muscles in a real world type of setting.
The field experience focused on the integration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content areas.
Thirty-one students broke up into teams and then collaborated to solve the mystery of the death of Mr. Boddy.
“It was fun because we were doing hands-on activities and not sitting in a desk at school,” Summer Froberg.
To process ballistics evidence students examined the rifling marks on bullets fired at the Houston Police Department crime lab, and then matched the marks to the bullet at the crime scene.
Using simulated blood, students determined the blood type of the “blood sample” left at the crime scene.
They used measurements and graphing to determine the height of the suspect that fired the weapon at the bullet trajectory station.
For the all-important fingerprint findings, students used magnetic powder to lift a fingerprint, and matched it to each of the suspects.
The mini-investigators matched the DNA profile of the crime scene blood to the suspects.
By microscopically examining hair samples left at the crime scene, students were able to match or disqualify each of the suspects.
And to determine the color pigments in suspect pens, they matched the resulting chromatograms to the ink on the note left at the crime scene.
The long day of work gave students a new found appreciation for the boys in blue.
“I now know what forensic scientists do everyday at work. It was really fun,” said student Nate Roy.
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