We were tasked by Mr. Renwick to solve the crime of who stole the Osprey eggs from our local loch. The police had reduced the suspects down to four. We became forensic detectives for the afternoon. We had three types of evidence to test.

These were:

Water from the suspect’s boat

Shoe print and example of the shoe to compare

Fibre samples from the scene of the crime and from each suspect’s coat.

We worked really carefully and methodically to work out who did it.

We used red cabbage indicator to compare the water types… we got some impressive results!

we also got to use a microscope that was attached to Mr. Renwick’s iPad by Bluetooth.

After we had followed the science, we got to see the police notes and realised that if we had read these first then we would have automatically suspected the wrong person. Two of the clues could have been a number of people and it was the fibres in the end that gave us the culprit. The water was a big give away but, the fibres put the criminal at the scene of the crime!

We had great fun doing this and went on to find out what other things were acidic, alkaline, or neutral.

A big thank you to SSERC for the resources to do this fun, scientific afternoon.