Crime Scene Forensics Essay

Total Length: 1051 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

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Splatter

The author of this report has been asked to construct an experiment surrounding the spattering patterns of liquids at crime scenes or anywhere else where the way a drop hits and makes a pattern on a surface matters. The common example of this would be blood drop patterns at verifiable or known crime scenes. Indeed, the way in which drops fall would tend to indicate how they fell, from how far they fell, from what angle they hit the surface and what the likely cause of all of the above was. This report will list a problem statement, a hypothesis, the procedure that will be used to test the hypothesis and address the problem and a conclusion. The safety precautions used will also be listed and described. While blood and other fluid spatter can lead to varying or wild conclusions, there are certain patterns and trends that are fairly simple to make out and establish but the outcomes found will vary based on things like temperature, the surface that is being dropped, the angle at which that surface is situated and the texture of the surface.

Problem Statement

The problem to be addressed is whether one would see different patterns and outcomes when undergoing experiments with blood spatter based on variations in things like the surface the blood is being dropped on, how far a fall the drop takes before it hits, whether angle makes a difference in what happens when the blood hits the ground and so forth. It is reasonable to assume that there would be some, if not a lot, of variation based on the surface angle and composition.

Hypothesis

The hypothesis for this work will be as follows and it has to be broken into multiple parts:

The height from which the blood drop falls is going to impact the average width that is exhibited by the resulting drops

The width of the ensuing blood drops will probably be round when hitting the surface but will almost certainly vary in width based on how far up the drop comes from.

The change with the blood drop width as compared to height may be linear but it may also resemble a curve if graphed.

The angle of the plane that the drop hits will have an impact on what shape and direction the blood drop takes. Gravity will obviously have an impact when the angle is slanted but the question becomes how much

The surface composition and form of the surface on which the blood falls is going to matter quite greatly.
A smooth surface that has blood falling on it will look different than something like carpet, tile or paper.

Procedure

The procedure for this experiment will be as follows. First, using actual blood is a non-starter for obvious reasons. However, the creator of this experiment used the fake blood solution described on the website. Only one large batch that was enough to cover everything was used so as to keep the blood on all of the tests the same. Otherwise, the results would not be reliable. So as to not make a huge mess, drop cloths were used and there were white sheets tacked onto floors, wall-like contraptions and even contrived ceilings so as to see what happens when factoring what is going on and how the imitation blood is getting to where it goes.

The table on the "Procedure" tab is the basis for the experiment. A total of ten drops each from heights of thirty centimeters, sixty centimeters, ninety centimeters and so forth will be tested. The diameter in millimeters was measured for each drop and then averaged together. For each result, it will be notated on a chart. Once all of the heights are covered via the experiments, a line will be drawn to see if it's a straight line, a curve or something else.

Conclusion

The conclusions reflected that the straight drops using gravity were basically round and symmetric with the size of the drop varying based on the height. Of course, this would change once the platform on which the blood is being dropped is shifted from being level to being at an angle relative to the ground. As for surfaces that are not smooth and clean, this would obviously impede (but not stop) how far the blood would splatter. Regardless, there is expected to be a shift in the blood based on which end of the blood drop is facing towards ground. This is based on the fact that gravity would have at least some effect. The effect is presumed to be more pronounced based on how high up the drop comes from. This is because the drop would be moving faster than if it….....

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"Crime Scene Forensics" (2015, March 09) Retrieved May 19, 2024, from
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"Crime Scene Forensics", 09 March 2015, Accessed.19 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/crime-scene-forensics-2149744