Crime Scene Investigation & Forensic Chemistry

Methods and Techniques

What Do Forensic Chemists Do?

Gas Chromatography

Spectrophotometry

Toxicology

Fingerprinting

Forensic chemist isolates foreign particles from contaminated wheat gluten using a stereoscopic light microscope.

Forensic scientists examine evidence from crime scenes in an effort to solve crimes. This scientist is removing a piece of blood-stained material gathered at a crime scene for DNA testing.

• Every substance collected at a crime scene is a unique mixture of chemical compounds that can ultimately be identified

Definitions

• A highly trained forensic chemist can determine the composition and nature of materials and predict the source as well as matching sample against sample

Chromatography in which the substance to be separated into its components is diffused along with a carrier gas through a liquid or solid adsorbent for differential adsorption.

The measurement of color in a solution by determining the amount of light absorbed in the ultraviolet, infrared, or visible spectrum, widely used in clinical chemistry to calculate the concentration of substances in solution.

The science dealing with the effects, antidotes, detection of poisons.

A procedure whereby the genetic information, called DNA, in a person's cells is analyzed and identified.

What is Gel Electrophoresis?

Forensic Chemistry:

In Depth

A method for separation and analysis of macromolecules (DNA, RNA and proteins) and their fragments, based on their size and charge.

Conclusion

Every chemist is schooled in general, organic, and analytical chemistry, but forensic chemists also specialize in specific areas of expertise. For example, an inorganic chemist may examine traces of dust by using microchemistry to identify the chemical composition of tiny particles. Another chemist might employ thin-layer chromatography during the analysis of blood or urine for traces of drugs, and still another might use chemical reactions in test tubes to identify larger samples of compounds.

What is PCR?

Chemistry is in the world all around us. It obviously plays a big role in one of today's favored fields, crime scene investigation.

The polymerase chain reaction

• a biochemical technology in molecular biology to amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence.

Crime Scene Investigation (C.S.I) is the inspection of a scene after a crime has occurred. In today's society Crime Scene Investigation has been made popular by television shows and has been very commercialized. What people don't realize is the science behind the scenes.

Forensic Chemistry

• Forensic chemistry is a field of chemistry dedicated to the analysis of various substances that might be important or might have been used in the commission of a crime.

• Generally refers to controlled substance or drug analysis.

Crime Scene Investigation & Forensic Chemistry