Issue Date: March 24, 2008 Clues At The Scene Of The Crime
FORENSIC investigations look so glamorous on television.
Appearing at crime scenes with data collection tools in hand,
good-looking investigators on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"
and related shows never miss a clue. With ease and style, they
quickly spot out-of-place fibers, specks of suspicious powders,
faint bloodstains and fingerprints, and whisk the samples back
to the labs for analysis. In no time, these smooth operators
interrogate the materials collected at the crime scene with the
latest microscopy and spectroscopy tools. And then, before the
next commercial break or certainly before the episode ends, the
agents identify the case-solving substance and come up with
three-dimensional molecular structures of the material, not to
mention the name and photograph of the crime's perpetrator. Real
forensic scientists also work with tiny fibers, faint
bloodstains, and other types of samples collected at crime
scenes. Unfortunately, the real McCoys d