I wore a white cotton t-shirt for a full 24 hours for the trace evidence experiment. First, I wore it while in my room. I then took my puppy and went downstairs for breakfast. I later went to my friend Dona’s house to bake cakes for the school’s parents’ meeting; we spent the whole afternoon in her backyard catching up. In the evening I went to the airport to pick my sister who had just come back from her honeymoon and later prepared dinner and then removed the t-shirt before I went to bed. The t-shirt collar had a little patch of dirt due to sweat and the left side of the t-shirt had a small dirt patch from holding the puppy or helping Dona in the kitchen. There was no other visible trace of dirt only some hair and fiber. I kept it in a zip lock bag to avoid contamination.
The next day I placed the t-shirt on a clean white surface and used a tweezer to remove visible hair and fiber. The flashlight came in handy, as it enabled me to see even the smallest of the specimen from the shirt. Photos of every stage were taken to ensure that I was able to retrieve three samples from the t-shirt. I placed the sample on white paper but for the white specimen, I had to use a gray surface for visibility. The samples included my hair and probably John’s (my sister’s husband) from hugging him on their arrival -they were both black in color, my puppy’s fur which was white and white fiber from Dona’s sisal chair. There was also a few brown hairs probably from hugging my sister on arrival.
Trace evidence is indeed an essential part of an investigation whether criminal or otherwise. Trace evidence is a source of physical evidence that is usually presented through fibers, hair, pieces of wood or glass (Forensicsciencesimplified.org, 2016). They play a vital role of telling what could have happened. The retrieved specimen are a clear trace evidence of where I have been and who I might have been with. Therefore trace evidence is used to tell where an individual could have been and with whom. Also, trace evidence is a source of vital information such as DNA that could play a crucial role for instance in a criminal investigation (Crime-scene-investigator.net, 2016).
Photos of Specimen
White t-shirt
Dirty White t-shirt
Black hair specimen on white surface
White hair and Sisal fiber specimen
Brown hair specimen on white surface
References
Crime-scene-investigator.net. (2016). A Simplified Guide to Trace Evidence. Crime-scene
investigator.net. Retrieved 14 July 2016, from http://www.crime-scene-investigator.net/simplified-guide-to-trace-evidence.htm
Forensicsciencesimplified.org. (2016). Trace Evidence: Introduction.
Forensicsciencesimplified.org. Retrieved 14 July 2016, from http://www.forensicsciencesimplified.org/trace/
