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Middle school students dead set on learning forensic science

Written by DeadGirl
Wednesday, 07 June 2006
BENJAMIN MALAKOFF St. Cloud Times ST. CLOUD, Minn. - There is a mystery to be solved in Room 7 of Sts. Peter, Paul & Michael Middle School in St. Cloud: Myra Maines has been killed. Worry not, though, a class full of seventh- and eighth-graders is on the case. Students are getting a hands-on taste of forensic science, examining bones and learning document analysis. While it ties in with the chemistry and physics units the students were already studying this year, the unit also elevates the students' interest in science as a result of playing with bones and seeing television shows that glamorize the jobs of crime-scene analysts. Myra Maines is the name of the fictional person the students are trying to identify. Barb Gancek, a science teacher at the school, is teaching the unit with the help of Lois Bichler, a microbiology professor at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. Bichler's nephew, a seventh-grader at Sts. Peter, Paul & Michael, suggested Bichler come to the school to teach this very subject. The students finished Wednesday learning about bone and blood analysis and began Thursday learning about document analysis. "It's more hands-on than we're used to," eighth-grader Michael Friebe said. "It's not looking in a textbook. It's really doing it instead of reading about it." With blood analysis, the students learned how to find blood types and the direction in which blood splatters depending on where it drops. Recently, the students examined a mock crime scene outside the school with bones strewn about. They photographed the crime scene and used the pictures later as evidence. They also used tables of information and case studies to discern race, height and gender from skulls, leg bones and pelvises. In learning document analysis, Bichler will teach the students about the FBI's repository of ink, paper fibers, florescence of paper and if a document has been altered. The students will be able to tell if things such as suicide notes were forged and how to make secret notes with disappearing ink. Gancek said the school hasn't had a curriculum like this before, but it gets the students interested in science and fits in with existing subjects. This week, seventh-grader Marisa Bryer played with a fibula, the smaller bone in the lower leg, and said the person they were examining is 5 feet 4 inches. It's a woman because of the wider hips on the pelvis, she added. "Blood splatter was so much fun," she said, adding that they released drops of liquid from different heights to see how they would fall. One table of students determined its bones were from a 5 foot 7 inch Caucasian male. "We get to play with actual bones!" said eighth-grader Jake Schroeder. Mary Wilder, another eighth-grader, almost re-enacted "Hamlet" with the skull. "It could be rectangular eyes or circular eyes," said Laura Schroeder, a seventh-grade student. So who killed Myra Maines? No one's quite sure yet, but there's a few budding scientists on the case. http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/14742123.htm

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries