Crime Scene Investigation
For this project we had to solve a murder mystery. To start off the project we were given a crime report of Carelton Comets death. On October 26, 2016 at 7:00 PM Carelton Comet had a picnic with friends and family to celebrate his release from prison. He invited Nancy Normal, Theresa Terra, Fred Flimmer, Sam Sophomore, and Glen Glee. At 7:35 PM the sky darkened, the picnic table rustled, people screamed and Carelton Comet was found dead with a large steak knife stabbed in his back. At the crime scene, the murder weapon (a steak knife) was bagged and sent to the lab for us to analyze. It had hair and two blood types on it that we analyzed. We also found fingerprints and a note that stated, "You are a dead man" at the scene. We also created family pedigrees to look at the diseases that run in all the families as well as the karyotypes of each suspect. After analyzing fingerprints, blood types, chromosome disorders, the pens found at the crime scene, and doing DNA fingerprinting we concluded that Nancy Normal killed Carelton Comet in the first degree. You can view all our evidence in the presentation below.
Concepts
First-degree murder: an unlawful killing that is both willful and premeditated
Second-degree murder: an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned
Third-degree murder: committed with the intention of causing bodily harm, but not necessarily death.
Ink Chromatography: the separation of the colors in ink
Gene: sequence of DNA that codes for a protein and thus determines a trait
Genotype: genetic makeup of an organism
Phenotype: physical characteristics of an organism
Alleles: one of a number of different forms of a gene
Dominant: has power over the recessive traits
Recessive: falls under dominant
Co-dominant: when both alleles of a gene contribute to the phenotype of the organism
Incomplete Dominant: situation in which one allele is not completely dominant over another
Homozygous: term used to refer to an organism that has two identical alleles for a particular trait
Heterozygous: term used to refer to an organism that has two different alleles for a particular trait
Reflection
I thought that this was by far the best project of the year. It was very engaging and interesting to learn about the science behind how to solve murders. We did lots of analysis and work in our school lab which was super fun. The one down side of this project was that my group was not very focused and on task. It was very easy to get distracted because we were constantly moving around and looking at different data. I learned that I get very annoyed when people in my group do not contribute or do nothing. This was the case for two people in my group. I also learned how to how to handle this and get people back on task or have them do something productive. I will continue to keep others on task during group and I will set a good example. A peak of this project was the fact that this was the type of work that real forensic scientists do. A pit was my groups inability to stay on task. Overall this was a really fun project and I hope we do more like this.
First-degree murder: an unlawful killing that is both willful and premeditated
Second-degree murder: an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned
Third-degree murder: committed with the intention of causing bodily harm, but not necessarily death.
Ink Chromatography: the separation of the colors in ink
Gene: sequence of DNA that codes for a protein and thus determines a trait
Genotype: genetic makeup of an organism
Phenotype: physical characteristics of an organism
Alleles: one of a number of different forms of a gene
Dominant: has power over the recessive traits
Recessive: falls under dominant
Co-dominant: when both alleles of a gene contribute to the phenotype of the organism
Incomplete Dominant: situation in which one allele is not completely dominant over another
Homozygous: term used to refer to an organism that has two identical alleles for a particular trait
Heterozygous: term used to refer to an organism that has two different alleles for a particular trait
Reflection
I thought that this was by far the best project of the year. It was very engaging and interesting to learn about the science behind how to solve murders. We did lots of analysis and work in our school lab which was super fun. The one down side of this project was that my group was not very focused and on task. It was very easy to get distracted because we were constantly moving around and looking at different data. I learned that I get very annoyed when people in my group do not contribute or do nothing. This was the case for two people in my group. I also learned how to how to handle this and get people back on task or have them do something productive. I will continue to keep others on task during group and I will set a good example. A peak of this project was the fact that this was the type of work that real forensic scientists do. A pit was my groups inability to stay on task. Overall this was a really fun project and I hope we do more like this.