Our Project
Our project was to solve a murder mystery using forensic science. Five people were invited to join Carelton Comet for a picnic at San Marin High School on October 16, 2016 at 7:35pm. These five people were Teresa Terra, Fred Flimmer, Glen Glee, Sam Sophomore, and Nancy Normal. Carlton Comet was murdered with a knife to the back of the neck, when the sun somehow darkened and lit back up in a short timespan.Five pieces of evidence were left on the crime scene such as a note saying " YOU ARE A DEAD MAN," the knife, two types of blood found on the knife, hair fibers found on the knife, and fingerprints. The slideshow below shows what we did and how we found the evidence to back up who we thought was the murderer.
Content
- Genotype: an organism's genetic makeup
- Phenotype: an organism's physical characteristics
- Polygenic: a trait controlled by two or more genes
- Dominant: an allele who's trait overpowers another
- Co-Dominant: both alleles of a gene contribute to the phenotype
- Incomplete Dominant: one allele is not completely dominant over another
- Recessive: an allele who's trait is overpowered by others
- Gene: DNA sequence that codes for a protein and determines a trait
- Alleles: different forms of a gene
- Segregation: separation of alleles during gene formation
- Probability: likelihood an event will occur
- Homozygous: has two identical alleles for a trait
- Heterozygous: used to refer to an organism that has two different alleles for the same trait
- Antigens: markers on a red blood cell that determines the blood type
- Karyotype: chromosomes from DNA lined up by shape, size, and bands
- Pedigree: chart showing family history, relations, diseases, and past deaths
- Chromatography: the process of looking chemical properties of an ink sample on chromatography paper
Reflection
This project was exciting and I leaned many new things from this project. I leaned to work with the given evidence. There wasn't much evidence to base a murder on but we learned to get through it. I also learned how to look at this project with a positive outlook. With the last couple projects from this year, I was not all that happy or excited for them. This project was different because I changed my negative attitude to a positive one. Some things that did not go as planned or were some pits included unrealistic background information or slow guidance. The background given to us wasn't very realistic. For example the background case said that the sun darkened and relit back up in a short period. Another thing was that during the experiments, our group would finish the step before others and we did not know what to do. This led to some misunderstanding on what to do so we had to completely restart the experiment. Aside from those setbacks, the project was great and fun because of the freedom we had to see who was the murderer.