Primary Forensics Club

Allerton Grange School are currently hosting the second group of young students from Wigton Moor Primary School, who are taking part in the Crime Scene Investigation Club. Each club runs for six sessions and the aim is to eliminate a suspect each week to find who killed Mr Mean.

Each week the students have the opportunity try a different type of forensic analysis. Firstly, they had fun discovering that pens can be made up of a rainbow of colours, using chromatography. Next, students got to role-play being a police officer by taking fingerprints; covering the finger ends in ink and rolling them, firmly, onto paper. They also used carbon powder to lift their own prints; some had more success than others, and occasionally went home looking like an extra in Mary Poppins. In addition, the analysts-in-training have examined different white powders by heating them and mixing them with acids and other substances. Still to come is measuring blood splatter from different heights followed by identifying footprints from casts. In the final session we’ll learn the long-awaited truth and reveal who killed Mr Mean.

The groups have discussed how forensics works in real life and can be used to solve crimes.

Overall students have had great fun trying to work out whodunit, learning lots of skills along the way.