Wednesday, June 18, 2008
fingerprints
Since it was the first day i wanted to do something that interested me so i read about everything i could find on fingerprints. Patent prints are easy to see, but latent are clear and the kind you see on glasses, sort of transparent. As we all know no two humans have the same fingerprints and thats counting all ten fingers, so every finger has a unique print. Even identical twins have different prints. If you cut your fingers the prints grow back. Fingerprinting is the most common fingerprinting method in forensic science. Fingerprints are taken back to the lab to be analysized by dusting the print with a powder so it is visible, and then it is pressed onto a sheet and taken back to the lab to be compared with the enormous set of fingerprints the FBI has collected. Since Fingerprints are just secretions like sweat and amino acids placed on an object, if treated with a special substance they can tell us if the person was a smoker or a coffee drinker. Even though it is a very useful and basic method, dusting for prints can destroy valueable items that can be swabed for DNA analysis which is probably a more exact method
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2 comments:
Hi Duncan,
I wonder what factors influence the formation of finger prints. . .or are they "preformed" at birth?
Looks like you have a good topic here. . .as prints are still important. . .much like a family medical history is important to a physician.
Prints can be left for a number of years and lifted. Cultural Anthropologists & Archaeologists exploring the tombs in Egypt pulled many latient prints. So a challenge for investigation is "dating" prints at scenes. Where prints are great to prove a person has been there, it lacks time evidence. You should look at the different characteristics of prints http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint_authentication We all have loops and patterns that fall into nine general categories.
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