Scioly.org

Hi my name is Sarah and im in the 8th grade i have been doing this event for 4 years and i am bored does anyone else loathe this event

What kind of soil testing will we be having to do? There are no resources on soinc.org, and there is really nothing online.

outofsight13 wrote:What kind of soil testing will we be having to do? There are no resources on soinc.org, and there is really nothing online.

At the National competition, it was matching colors/appearance.

What are we going to have to do for the blood/DNA and footprint/tireprint section?

SciBomb97 wrote:What are we going to have to do for the blood/DNA and footprint/tireprint section?

well for footprint, DNA and tireprints; last year we just matched pictures

as far as blood spatters there was a recreation and we had to analyze the blood spatter.
(What direction they were going, what kind of splatter it was, what you can infer from it.)

Does anyone have any good websites for diagrams of fibers, hairs, and blood stains? Or a chart describing each plastic? I'm new to this event and I think my coach wants me to compete. Our first competition is next weekend, I need as much help and things to study as I can get!!!

For some info on fibers, hairs, etc., the links on the National site to those forensics Web pages can help if you're willing to do some digging. For the plastics, I didn't think I would ever be saying this, but the wiki is actually a good place to look because someone wrote up how to ID them with some characteristics. I have a table for these, but it's not available online (that I know of, anyways).

For the past Regional and State Competition, we've had to ID strands of hair in plastic bags with no microscopes. Is this just a faulty set-up or is there a way we can ID dog, cat, human hair just by looking at it (or with a hand lens)?

Also, in the past, we've had to test the powders with Phenolphthalein and will probably have to do so again at our State competition, which is coming up next week. To save time, we're thinking of putting the pH of each powder on our cheat sheet and not bothering to test them with Phenolphthalein at the competition (I suspect it will be a VERY long test). If the powder tested a pH of 8 with pH paper, would it be colorless or pink when tested with Phenolphthalein? The range for colorless is 0-8.2 and the range for pink/fuchsia is 8.2-12.0 according to Wikipedia. So if the powder happened to be on the borderline (like Baking Soda: pH 8-9) would it be safer to go with the lower range?

Last question: what's a way of organizing the various spot plates and beakers? Every single time, we've had trouble remembering which powders we tested in which spot plates so we had to retest the same powder a couple of times.

Thanks in advance!

For the past Regional and State Competition, we've had to ID strands of hair in plastic bags with no microscopes. Is this just a faulty set-up or is there a way we can ID dog, cat, human hair just by looking at it (or with a hand lens)?

By any chance did your test have to do with a dog being abducted?

My parter and i had to just rely on the length and color. We ended up placing 5th though.