Week 7

Hello, everyone! My investigation about the murder case is going pretty well. My chief, math teacher, has asked me about certain information that is necessary for solving this case. Therefore, I'm presenting you here the following information. Of course, I haven't finished solving the case since there isn't enough information to work with, but this research my chief asked me about is going to help my team and I a lot.

1. What is the Newton’s Law of Cooling?
Newton’s Law of Cooling is the difference in temperature between the temperature of an object and the temperature of the environment.


2. What variables in your problem correspond with the variables in the Newton’s Law of Cooling?
The variables in my problem that correspond to the variables in Newton’s Law of Cooling are:

ü Temperature of the Environment
ü Temperature of the Death Body
ü The Constant K
ü Possible Time of Death.

3. According to this Law, at what time approximately the death happened?

For the moment, I cannot answer this question since the investigation hasn’t finished yet, but as soon as I have the time, I’ll let you know.

4. How does the room temperature affect the time of death?
The room temperature affects the time of death because depending on it the change in the death body’s temperature will occur. This is due to the fact that when a person dies, the blood stops circulating, so the body doesn’t produce more heat and the temperature of the body increases o decreases based on the temperature of the environment, the place where it is.


5. How does an illness (e.g. fever) affect the time of death?
An illness affects the time of death because it isn’t going to be easy to calculate it since the forensic investigators won’t know the temperature of the body before it was killed. Also, the results will vary because of this due to the fact that you won’t get the same time of death based with the temperature of a healthy person and with the one of a sick one, which can be higher or lower than the temperature of a healthy person.


6. How exact is the approximation of the Newton’s Law of Cooling for predicting the time of death?
It has been proved that it provides you with a good approximation. However, it isn’t one hundred percent exact since it won’t give you the exact hour, minutes and seconds in which everything happened. Also, there are many factors involved just to get this approximation, so if you have one wrong, the hour will be wrong, too.

Learning Goals
Since the beginning of this project, I have established some learning goals that I want to achieve during its development. These goals are:

-To know how to apply math for solving a murder case.
-To know how to obtain the time of death with the help of Newton’s Law of Cooling.
-To learn more about Forensic Science.
-To know what objects and factors must be taken into consideration to solve a murder case.
-To know what a Forensic Scientist does.

Well, looks like this is it for today since I have to keep thinking on how to solve the case and hope that I did well in my math quiz, which is related with Newton's Law of Cooling. This week passed really fast and I had lots of homework, so I'm pretty tired. I shall go to sleep in order to do all the things I have to do tomorrow because believe it or not, I'm going to have lots of teamworks, so I won't have a chance to rest. Therefore, I leave you for now, but don't worry I'm going to let you know about the progress I make with the case. See you!

Final Project

Hello, everyone! I'm already beginning my final project of Calculus, so I'm posting all the things the teacher asked us for this entry. I hope you like them. I'm getting very excited with the project. I can't wait to do all the calculations that are needed. I leave you here with all the information that my teacher asked me. I know you will find it very interesting. See you!

Team Name: 21FI

21 Forensic Investigation

Team:

Gabriel Robinson http://pequegaby.blogspot.com/ Math Expert

Alejandra Sanabria http://axela13.blogspot.com/ Media Expert

Silvia Galindo http://silvie4ever.blogspot.com/ Journalist

Alan Ríos http://www.elalan90.blogspot.com/ Media Expert

Sahara de Leon http://www.zaradeleon.blogspot.com/ Forensic Scientist

1. What is forensic science?

Forensic Science is the areas of science and math applications that allow forensic investigators to discover the cause and time of death of a murdered person and who the murderer is. Also, it is the science that is applied in a court of law to find the culprit of a murder.

2. What kind of evidence can be collected in a murder case?

The kinds of evidence that can be collected in a murder case are:

Ø Bloodstains
Ø Some kind of weapon
Ø Trace Evidence
Ø Material Evidence
-Paint
-Glass
-Fibres
-Plant Material
Ø Clues from the Environment
-Collection
-Basic Comparison
-Seeds and Pollen
-Soil and Dust

3. Why is important to determine the time of death?

It is important to determine the time of death because in this way, police officers and forensic scientists can determine who the murderer is since they can compare it with the alibies of the suspects.

4. What methods are commonly used to find the time of death?

The methods that are commonly used to find the time of death are:

Ø Based on the species of bugs that layed their eggs in the body. Example: Blowflies.
Ø Newton’s Law of Cooling
Ø Radioactive Half Life
Ø Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)

5. What factors are considered in Algor Mortis?

The factors that are considered in Algor Mortis are:

Ø Movement and humidity of the air
Ø Clothing and Coverings
Ø The “size” of the body
Ø Immersion in water

6. How does the environment affect the time of death?

The environment affects the time of death by accelerating the descomposition process. By doing this, all the evidence is destroyed, so the forensic scientists have a hard time detecting the time of death due to humidity, wind, water, changes in the weather, heat, among other factors. Also, because of the acceleration of the descomposition process, many insects and animals will detect the body, so they are more likely to eat parts of the body or vital evidence that might help detect the time of death, like an organ. Therefore, the environment affects in a great deal the time of death.


7. What can you tell about the different methods of temperature reading of the body? Do they make a difference in the results?

Not all of the different methods of temperature reading help to determine the temperature of a death body. This is due to the size of the thermometer. For example, if you try to measure the temperature of a death body via oral or axillary, you won’t get a good result since the thermometer is too small not only in size, but in range, too. So, these two methods are useless for this case. However, the other two reading methods are better, which are via an abdominal stab and per rectum. These two last methods are better; since the heat that is produced in the areas the thermometer is introduced in are hotter than the heat produced in the mouth and in the axila.

What is the goal or main objective of the final project?

The goal or main objective of the final project is to let us see the major role math plays not only in daily life, but also in forensic science to know the cause and time of death of a murdered person, which lets me understand that every thing in daily life is influenced by math even nature. Therefore, math can be applied everywhere and this project shows more applications of it.

Exams are Over!

Hello, everyone! I’m back. Finally, the exams are over. It looked like they would never end. This week was a chaos for my classmates and I since we had to study for exams, do partial projects and homeworks.

I’m really happy since I got a good grade in my Integral Calculus Exam. It wasn’t really hard, but I had to be careful with a lot of details. I think that what helped me a lot was that I understood everything since the beginning, so I just had to practice for the partial exam. It was a long test, especially for the lot of integrals that the teacher put us.

However, everything doesn’t end here. I’m already starting a new partial and I have to keep my average since I got a high grade, so I will have to practice more to keep it especially now, that the teacher is giving us more problems that require a lot of thinking, but they are easy. Anyway, I’ll have to do more exercises even though the teacher doesn’t give them to me, so I will make the other exercises that are in the Larson book and put a lot of attention in class since we are learning new formulas.

Well, I guess that’s it for this week since I have to finish getting ready because I’m going to Guadalajara to meet Tec’s facilities there. I’ll let you know later how my trip was, so don’t miss my next blog. See you and take care!

Murder, We Wrote...

I’m back! Somehow I managed to survive this week. Even though it was a short one, it was really stressful since the partial exams have started and on Monday, I have my Math Test, which is really scary, but I know I’ll be fine since I like math a lot. Moreover, I got some good news this week. There is a trip to Guadalajara, so my friends and I can meet the facilities of Campus Guadalajara. I’m very excited about this and that I will be able to see my brother who is studying there. I already told him about it and he is as excited as I am. He says he is waiting for me, so he can show me the city since I have never gone to Guadalajara before. It feels like it has been a long time since I last saw him. So, I can’t wait to see him.

Anyway, there is something I would like to talk about and that is my final project of Integral Calculus. Apparently, one of the teachers has been murdered in the library by a lethal injection, but who did it? There is only one suspect until now and that is Miss X since her fingerprints are on the syringe found along with the body. Although she has an alibi, there are two witnesses that say that they saw her at the library around 9:00 o’clock. Due to the complexity of the case, a group of experts has been gathered to find the hour of death and to determine whether Miss X is guilty or not. I am among the group of experts that has been summoned and let me tell you something, this isn’t an easy case since the evidence has been thrown out due to multilple lab errors.

Don’t worry my readers; I’m sure I’m capable of solving this case. You might not be aware of this, but this case can be solved with the help of Math and based on the Newton’s Law of Cooling. I’m really excited about this project since I can find another area where Math can be applied and I never thought about doing this kind of project at school, especially in Math class. Also, I like this project. I have always liked Forensic Science since I’m a huge fan of the program called C.S.I. Las Vegas and I would never miss a single program. What I like the most of this project is that I will be able to represent the whole scene in a movie, which will let me act as my favorite character of C.S.I., Grissom. I don’t know if I’ll be as good and as fast as him solving this kind of cases, but I’m sure of something. I will solve this case and get a 100 in my project. Of course, it will require a lot of work, but I will be able to learn more about Forensic Science. Therefore, don’t forget to check my blog once in a while just to see what happens with this case and how my research is going since I will let you know about it through my blog. Well, I have to go. See you next Friday!

I have come back!

Hello, everyone! It has been a while since I made an entry, but I was sick and so busy with homework and projects at school that I didn’t give myself any time to write in my blog, so I’m sorry.

This week was really long and full of work. Looks like, the teachers like to make us suffer since they are giving us a lot of homework, especially now that the partial exams are coming closer. I understand that they want to have everything marked before the partial exams, but they should give us a break once in a while because too much work can stress us out and decrease our concentration in class. Anyway, nothing interesting happened during the week, so there isn’t much to talk about, only that my classmates are having a hard time with integrals and they are feeling a little disappointed. On the contrary, I’m really happy since integrals represent a challenge for me and I like that since I can think a lot and apply a lot of algebra. This makes me really happy even though I get a little frustrated because sometimes it takes me too much time to solve certain exercises, but somehow I manage to solve them.

Before I finish, I would like to talk about a quote of a french mathematician named Blaise Pascal. Of course, my Calculus teacher mentioned him in one of her classes last semester, but anyway, I found one of his famous phrases, which I found very interesting and it says “We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others..." This phrase has given me a lot to think about and I can say that it is true. Sometimes when somebody tells us something we don’t agree completely with him/her unless we find it possible through a process made by us. An example of this can be when we do a math problem. Many people can tell us many answers, but we won’t believe the answer is true until we solve the problem ourselves and verify that the answer given by another person or the book is the same as ours. What Pascal means is that we can be told many ideas or theories about many things, but the one that will convince us the most is the one that we find by ourselves whether it is by accident or not. It is just like what people say “Seeing is Believing”. Just to complete what I’m saying, I would like to say that Pascal’s phrase also involves hard work because the hardest we work to find the reason of something, the more we are convinced that our results are better than the ones of others.

Quite a phrase Blaise Pascal wrote. I think I’m going to look for more of his phrases since he was a really wise man. Well, I guess that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed this entry and wait for the next one. I think it is going to be more interesting since I’m having a long weekend and I’m going to have a lot of fun. See you and have a nice weekend!