Mathematics in forensics is a set of different activities that I have been implementing for the second year, with the goal of students rebuilding and working out mathematics materials through practical examples in forensics, but also to improve and expand their knowledge in other sciences (biology, chemistry, physics). We began our learning by calculating and solving specific mathematical tasks - determining the time of death of a person using the logarithms and Newton's law of cooling, finding the angle at which the drop of blood fell to the floor, based on the length of the thigh and the upper bone determined the height of a person ... From the very beginning, The topic was very interested in the students. Research is done in a classroom, a computer cabinet, a school yard, and we often share our knowledge with students and teachers of our school for which we organize lectures. To make our knowledge complete, we invite experts to confirm and expand our knowledge. Thanks to them, we stole into a forensic suitcase, with ballistics we are convinced that using our knowledge of trigonometry and square functions we can determine how important they have in determining the path of the projectile, to learn what the activities of classical forensic expertise have learned about the method of paraffin gloves.
Our lecturer, forensic scientist explained to us the connection between mathematics and dactyloscopic formula, we learned how to write our dactyloscopic formula, and in the lecture we organized for pupils and teachers of the school, we showed how to write the dactyloscopic formula in a binary record and how we create a database.
We also presented our findings at the science festival „Nauk nije bauk“.
This kind of learning was very interested in the students, so we continued with new examples of the application of math in forensics. With the trigonometry we managed to even more accurately determine the angle of drop of blood drop, learned to determine the point of convergence, and finally, to find the height from which the drop dropped to the surface.
Newton's law of cooling and logarithm usage helped us to calculate the time of death of a person. We tested this law experimentally with the interactive learning of LabKit and temperature sensors, analyzing the change of the graph of exponential functions that we received and then discussing the topic of thermoregulation in humans and the homeotemperature.
For some calculations and checking our forensic knowledge, we also used applications for mobile phones: ballistic calculator, metal detector, pedometer, goniometer, forensic UV lamp, thermal camera.
All the activities that we realized at school, we have described in detail on Math in Forensic http://mathinforensic.weebly.com/.
This approach to learning was presented at the final conference of MA.R.C.H. (MAking Science Real and sCHools) project in London. Extremely positive comments from colleagues from different countries have just shown that the idea is to connect knowledge very well in this way.
Video presentation of some of our activities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJtiki1qMVs
Many more questions are waiting to be investigated: the role of probability and statistics in forensics, digital forensics, and much more. Mathematics can be interesting if presented in the right way!
