CSI: Siena pits kids against crime

Declan Cohen recently shed his identity as a seventh-grader at Holy Cross School in Albany and became a crime scene investigator.

Forensic science was the name of the game at "CSI: Siena," one of the exhibits at the "Spring Into Science" seminar for Catholic school students, held at Maria College in Albany.

The morning -- which also included workshops on nursing, the heart, hearing, vision and occupational therapy -- was sponsored by Albany diocesan Catholic Charities and St. Peter's Hospital.

On the scene

Students from the medical program at Siena College in Loudonville assisted younger pupils with the hands-on techniques used by real forensic sciences to track down criminals.

Using microscopes, genetic information, UV lamps, fingerprinting, chemical tests and chromatography, the students tried to discover which fictional Siena professor was behind the theft of a ground-breaking homework-dissolving substance.

Ryan McIntyre, a Siena sophomore, said that the goals were to offer a peek into the world of the forensic scientist, and to help students realize that math and science can be fun.

Speaking to 12 eighth-graders from Blessed Sacrament School in Albany, he said, "A lot of times, you sit around in class and say, 'This is boring.' We're here to show you that it can be fun. We want you to continue studying math and science."

Crew's clues

Siena students Joan Paul and Claire Birone distributed bags of "evidence" taken from the "crime scene."

In the bags, Ms. Birone told the class, were the data that they would need to identify the culprit. First, they had to compare evidence from the scene with information taken from five suspects. When all the data was gathered, the students could discover "whodunit."

Declan listened as Ms. Birone explained that chemical testing can help gumshoes discover which substances found in suspects' offices matched those at the crime scene. The students experimented by mixing two substances to form a chemical reaction. The right substance gummed and jelled, forming a polymer, while the wrong substance remained inert.

"Mine's a little sticky!" said Declan.

Fingerprints

At another station, students compared fingerprints found on a beaker at the crime scene with those of the suspects.

Using a UV lamp and goggles to protect their eyes, they compared whorls and swirls to note that two of the suspected professors had used that beaker recently.

Alexandra France and Casey Waterson bent over a microscope, comparing a fiber sample from the lab coat of the culprit with samples taken from the clothes of the suspects.

With the human eye, they couldn't differentiate among the samples, but they started to notice the disparities when peering through heavy magnification.

DNA findings

Students encountered modern genetics at the next station, where they compared DNA from a drop of blood found at the scene with samples taken from the suspects.

Siena student Greg Perry noted that the culprit's DNA would be an exact match, and helped students to see the separations and out-of-order discolorations that differentiated one professor's DNA from the next's.

Holy Cross student Greg Bishop made a checkmark on his evidence sheet when he was certain he has the right sequence picked out.

Aha-moment

A little while later, 14-year-old Katie Bloomer, an eighth-grader at Blessed Sacrament School in Albany, conferred with Kaitlyn Steinhorst, 13, to confirm that only one professor could have committed the crime.

"You have to go through a lot of tests to find out who did it!" Katie said.

Kaitlyn agreed and said she would like to consider a career as a forensic scientist. "It's a hard job," she noted, "especially doing all the tests and waiting for all of the results."

Difficult process

Many of the students thought that the more intricate testing, like matching fingerprints or fiber patterns, was the hardest thing to do.

Holy Cross student Alexa Dilembeck found the fingerprinting the most difficult; it took her a long time to figure out which "waves eventually matched up" with the evidence.

That was also an eye-opener for Alexandra, who told her fellow students that "you can never base a crime on just one piece of evidence."

Michael Rossnan from Holy Cross hopes to be a crime scene investigator someday. He noted, though, that he has a lot of education to go. "I'll have to learn a lot more about human anatomy and physics," he said.

(5/26/05)