Who Done It?

How does a teacher capture the attention of juniors and seniors–still dreaming of summer–at the start of the start of the school year? In Adrianna D’Amprisi’s Project Lead the Way Biomedical class, it’s with a crime scene and potentially a murder.

As students enter the DaVinci lab in the ILC at Brewster High School, the evidence is all around: a body, pipet tips, test tubes, an unlocked phone, a tipped-over flask, a clump of hair, blow flies and maggots around the body, blood on the table, blood on the floor, a knocked over chair, blood next to the victim’s hand and a note that reads, “see you later.”

Senior George Reyes explained the first task: to look around and “sketch the crime scene and list some important pieces of evidence.”

Students will use the information gathered at this crime scene for the next several weeks to figure out what happened to Anna Garcia–the fictional college student/lab tech who is the “deceased.”

“We have to figure out if Anna was intentionally killed or whether it was an accident. Since she works in a lab my thoughts were that the chemicals weren’t mixed properly causing an explosion or a poisonous gas was released into the air making her fall out of the chair. Or maybe she was intentionally murdered–there was a note in her lab coat,” explained senior Hailey Kurtz.

A lot of biological information can be gleaned from even a simple crime scene like the one presented. The students will conduct toxicology tests on the blood samples, work on pipet and microscope skills, dig into the life stages of blow flies, and do forensic hair analysis to see if someone else besides the victim was present at the scene of the crime.

“I have so many students each year who want to go into law enforcement or are just interested in criminology,” explained D’Amprisi, “I like this unit to show them all of the different applications for the biology facts they have already learned. We can use that knowledge to solve crimes or diagnose an illness. Diagnoses are often a little like detective work, so we use this unit to brush up on our deductive reasoning skills before we tackle any medical applications. Honestly, it's a great way to get them up and moving, right out of the gate! This is a very hands-on course, and this is a nice activity to set that tone quickly.”