Capstone #5 Main Inquiry Essay

For Capstone, we had to write an essay on our Main Inquiry Question. Since I had my interview yesterday and all the info is fresh in my mind. Even though the guy I interviewed Ron, studied cancer, He still showed a bunch of machines that cut DNA and replace/fix it. He was great. He let me see the lab at Cornell University.

Have you ever heard of Forensic science? Probably not right? Forensic science is where you solve murder cases using fingerprint and DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) data. After answering our sub-questions, we had to use the answers from our sub-questions to answer this question. My Main Inquiry Question is, How is forensic science used to solve crimes and what part of the process is most important? Honestly, this question looked really hard to answer, but I just tried to do my best to answer. I’m going to break down the question into 2 little parts because I can’t just answer the whole question all at once. Forensic science can back itself up with evidence.

 

Let’s start with the first part of the question, “How is forensic science used to solve crimes?” Forensic science is used to catch criminals. You can check the murder weapon for a DNA traces, footsteps or marks on the body of course. Then they take all of the DNA traces and put it on a machine which matches a person to their DNA. It shows a bunch of patterns. Then they find the criminals location and arrest him. Forensic science is a very effective way of catching criminals and it paid off in many situations. It also dates back to 44 BC in the case of Julius Caesar when he got stabbed to death. Forensic science is also used to solve crimes in terms of giving evidence. As you can see by my evidence, Forensic science is very important to an average case of murder.

 

The next part of what process of solving a case is the most important. Usually, an average forensic case takes about 54 hours and 45 minutes, so that’s probably a lot of steps. The most important step would probably be checking the weapon for DNA traces. But actually, research tells you that collecting evidence is the most important part because how would you get DNA traces without the weapon itself. Just so you can agree with me let me tell you all of the steps. First, collect evidence. Second go back to the lab to run tests. Next, you test each piece of evidence for DNA traces. After you finish, you get the patterns of DNA on each piece of evidence and you compare them to suspect’s DNA. Next, you figure out what DNA patterns look similar. Once you find the right one you go find the man/ women’s ID. Then you find out where they live bust in and arrest them. You probably go to court with them and you can use the evidence against them and they get proven guilty. After that, you put all the evidence and research in a case file. A case file is a folder that contains everything about the case to use for future reference. Or when the person you arrested is

a suspect for another crime you can check their criminal records for crimes that person did. It’s all about reputation. Now, let’s put this all together…

 

Forensic science is a very useful way of catching criminals because they can check DNA machines, to find the criminals identity and then arrest them. Also, the most important the process step is collecting DNA evidence from the crime scene. The question that I’ve been wanting to answer for a few months now and the answer is: Forensic science solves crimes in an easter manner and helps in the end. Also, the most important step is collecting evidence because it is the moral foundation of the case. If you are interested in learning more this is a link to show you how forensic science came to be:  http://www.softschools.com/timelines/forensic_science_timeline/99/ Here is a youtube video I got a lot of my research from.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3-Pj-zbEq8 If you want to learn about some equipment used in forensic science click these links:

  1. http://www.yourdictionary.com/sheet-protector
  2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bindle-paper
  3. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All-3M-Products/Adhesives-Tapes/Industrial-Adhesives-and-Tapes/Packaging-Tapes-Equipment/Fingerprint-Lifting-Tapes/?N=5002385+8710676+8710815+8710970+8711017+8718635+3294857497&rt=r3
  4. https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1CADEAC_enUS709US710&ei=1CTjWpW_H8Tr5gLzjp5g&q=Clear+tape%2Fadhesive+lift.+defenition&oq=Clear+tape%2Fadhesive+lift.+defenition&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i21k1.9017.18860.0.21588.17.16.1.0.0.0.246.1684.12j2j2.16.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..0.12.1222…33i22i29i30k1j33i160k1.0.bbKsaW1CJko&safe=active&ssui=on
  5. https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/bca/bca-divisions/forensic-science/Pages/forensic-programs-crime-scene-edpl.aspx
  6. https://www.google.com/search?q=defenition+of+tweezer&rlz=1CADEAC_enUS709US710&oq=defenition+of+tweezer&aqs=chrome..69i57.7628j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on
  7. https://us.vwr.com/store/product/8287817/slide-mailers
  8. https://www.google.com/search?q=What+equppment+do+forensicscientists+use&rlz=1CADEAC_enUS709US710&oq=What+equppment+do+forensicscientists+use&aqs=chrome..69i57.14007j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on

 

I hope you enjoyed!!

 

It Worked! #5

I rolled the marble, it triggered all the traps, then, POP! When the machine worked I wanted to scream but I am not supposed to because part of script was to act casual. So I just felt excited inside. It felt good to actually finish. We were so happy! We finished right on time to. My partner had to go somewhere.

So… they dropped me off and I told my parents. They told me to do some editing. But first, I was going to show everyone the success! I know the video I showed, My family, My cousins (all of them), and my friends. Some people were on there 30th try! It was a great success!

Next… the editing.

Building #4

When I got into my group for Rube Goldberg We thought of what should we do? We finally settled on simply pouring water into a cup. It was harder than we thought. How would it work? What should we use? We did not know so then one day my partner came up to me and said, “what if we pop a balloon?” I agreed and we planed our next meet.

We built everything but then we realized that it was only 5 steps. So we changed some stuff then we had 7. We had been wanting to use a pulley so we used it and that made 8 steps. We were running out of time. I was sick for a long time so we did not get to meet a lot. So the last meet we had we got right down to business. We recorded and time after time it would fail.

But, we were not ready to give up!

Rocket Reflection

I just came back from my group’s rocketry presentation. I was really nervous. The closer I got to the computer lab to present, the more scared I got. Once we started to present, I kind of stumbled and I felt a bit weird because my slides were the first two in the presentation. But after those first two slides, I was used to presenting and eventually I got through it! I tried to make the parents laugh by telling them that the guy screaming in the background of our third launch video was me. (It was me!)  Now that my group has presented, I can say that making and giving the presentations was a fun experience and one we’ll all remember. Only three groups went today and the other two will go tomorrow, on the second part of our share. After we were done, it was hard to keep quiet while looking at two other groups present for 12 minutes each, but we did because we knew how hard we had all worked on making the slides and practicing our presentations.

-Ben