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Do you guys go off the Woz's website for the pH of powders? It says that the pH of glucose and sodium chloride is 6 but I've been told my entire life that they are both neutral.

jimmy-bond wrote: ↑March 18th, 2020, 8:49 pm Do you guys go off the Woz's website for the pH of powders? It says that the pH of glucose and sodium chloride is 6 but I've been told my entire life that they are both neutral.

I don't really trust any one site's sources on pH anymore... just use what your own pH paper tells you.

SilverBreeze wrote: ↑March 18th, 2020, 9:06 pm

jimmy-bond wrote: ↑March 18th, 2020, 8:49 pm Do you guys go off the Woz's website for the pH of powders? It says that the pH of glucose and sodium chloride is 6 but I've been told my entire life that they are both neutral.

I don't really trust any one site's sources on pH anymore... just use what your own pH paper tells you.

I agree. I've personally found that with evidence testing, once you get a basic process down, find time to test every piece of evidence you could be tested on for powders/plastics/fibers (knowing what they are) with all the possible tests you know would work and see how they react with the materials you have so you really get a feel for how to ID them, making observations/notes along the way.

Honestly, as a rule of general advice: don't go with what a website tells you over what you can find out yourself. If you're making a dichotomous key for powders, always use the information that you can find out through testing. If you write something down from the internet that doesn't match your experimental results, you might end up getting confused and misidentifying a powder because you wrote down something incorrect. You need to know how to id the powders you're working with with the materials you have, so you can get the best results.

jimmy-bond wrote: ↑March 18th, 2020, 8:49 pm Do you guys go off the Woz's website for the pH of powders? It says that the pH of glucose and sodium chloride is 6 but I've been told my entire life that they are both neutral.

In case you're still looking . . . http://mypage.iu.edu/~lwoz/socrime/

Hi, I'm a rising freshman who is thinking about doing forensics next year. Here's one question I have: how big is the jump between crime busters and forensics? If any of you can give an answer, that would be great.

Thanks!

Locoholic wrote: ↑April 27th, 2020, 7:53 am Hi, I'm a rising freshman who is thinking about doing forensics next year. Here's one question I have: how big is the jump between crime busters and forensics? If any of you can give an answer, that would be great.

Thanks!

There's definitely a jump, but it's certainly manageable. I would totally recommend doing forensics, though. It's a lot of fun

Never had the opportunity to do Crime Busters myself, but all of our Div. B kids who have gone on to do it in Div. C do really well. I'd say if you liked CB and are willing to put in the work to do Forensics, then go for it! Forensics is one of my favorite events, and you can always change your mind later.

So I am going to be going into my freshman year, and I did scioly for all my time in middle school, but I want to change my events and I wanted to try forensics, though I didn't do crime busters in middle school. so I am starting anew and I just wanted to ask how the competition goes like. And how do tryouts for this event work? (Also for burn tests for substances do they give you the results of the burn test or do you do the burn test at the competition?)

-Warm Regards

ndkuma01 wrote: ↑May 25th, 2020, 2:16 pm So I am going to be going into my freshman year, and I did scioly for all my time in middle school, but I want to change my events and I wanted to try forensics, though I didn't do crime busters in middle school. so I am starting anew and I just wanted to ask how the competition goes like. And how do tryouts for this event work? (Also for burn tests for substances do they give you the results of the burn test or do you do the burn test at the competition?)

-Warm Regards

Tryouts for Forensics can vary pretty greatly. Some schools run tryouts where you're given the unknowns and you have to test them, while some give you all the results then you have to identify them based on the prepared results. If your school runs Forensics tryouts the former way, then polymer burn tests (such as hairs and fibers) will probably not be given to you and you will have to do the burn test yourself. As for plastics, density tests are more common than burn tests, but you will never have to perform a burn test on a plastic, those results will always be given to you.

Hope you do well! Forensics is a really fun and rewarding event.