Personal Project

Nethra Viswaroopan

IB Personal Project

25 January 2016

Crime Scene Investigation

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Investigation and Planning
3.  Taking Action
4.  Reflecting

        Introduction:

For my IB personal project, I decided to research about criminal science, and forensic science. I decided to research this idea because I have been interested in this idea of forensic science for a while and I thought it was a good idea to take advantage of the fact that I could combine my interest with this project to something worth doing. This interest began with, as many people would have assumed, through the influence of modern tv shows that surrounded the field of forensic science. Many T.V shows showed the glitz and the glam of working in such an eerie study, but after farther looking into the realistic side of forensics, I came to find that it was not remotely close to be so. The shows which portray forensics, seem to exaggerate many sides to this field for viewing purposes. This exaggeration seem to give people a false connotation to what criminal investigation really is, which those shows gave me. After doing more research on my own, I found many differences between the two, and although the differences were pretty drastic, the actual side of forensics kept my just as intrigued, which is what I did my project on.

Investigation and Planning:

This part of the project is where I really got into the idea of what I wanted to do with forensic science. There were just so many possibilities with forensics, and so many fields that I didn’t even know where to start. I began with starting off with researching the different topics and subjects of forensics. Looking at the amount of fields, it was difficult to know what I was really going to be interested in. I started off with researching the main fields that are more common, and then looked more into the ones I found interesting. Once I was able to get more information on forensics, I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with that information. Talking with my school’s forensic teacher seemed like a good place to start, so I talked to her about the kind of project I wanted to instigate. I knew I wanted to do something along the lines of doing like a walk through a crime to explain the use of forensics and how it is used, but I didn’t exactly know how to do that. The forensic teacher, being a lady who has many connections with other forensic people was able to give me a connection to a private investigator. Once given the contact, I went on to contacting the investigator and went to meet up with him.