Thursday, October 24, 2002 Posted: 11:09 AM EDT (1509 GMT)

High school students dabble in forensics

NEW ROCHELLE, New York (AP) -- The muddy area around the crime scene had yielded several promising footprints, and the crime scene investigators had carefully applied a liquid molding mixture. But when they tried to dig out the first hardened cast, it broke in half.

Awwww," said the investigators, sounding like the teenagers they are.  The investigators are the first high school students in the nation to use a forensic-science curriculum offered by Court TV and designed to capitalize on the interest in television shows like "CSI" and "Forensic Files."  Science teachers at high schools in the New York City suburbs of New Rochelle, Jericho and Wantagh are using some or all of the nine lessons in the curriculum, and their experiences will be presented this weekend to 150 other teachers from around the country at the Forensic Science Educational Conference in New York.

Evan Shapiro, a Court TV vice president, said he hopes the curriculum, which can be downloaded for free beginning Friday, will be in 1,000 classrooms nationwide by May.  "What people like about these TV shows is looking over the shoulder of the investigator," he said. "We're hoping to take this interest, and maybe the interest in real-life crimes like 9-11 or anthrax or the Washington sniper, and turn it into a real interest in biology and chemistry that shows these kids why science is important to their life."  Court TV devised the curriculum with guidance from the American Academy of Forensic Science. New Rochelle teacher Scott Rubins said it meets all educational standards. The nine lessons, grouped into three mysteries, include tests for gunshot residue and fingerprint matching. Together, they might typically fill a few weeks of the school year, Rubins said.

On Tuesday, his forensic science class went out near the high school track to work on "The Case of the Car that Swims," which posits that fishermen have found an automobile submerged in a river, 30 yards from shore. The students were making footprint castings in hopes of determining who was at the scene when the car went in.  "It's like pancake batter," said Samantha Madrazo, a 16-year-old senior, as she mixed bottled water with powdered dental stone, the material dentists use to make molds of teeth, and mixed it in a plastic bag.  In groups of three or four, the 30 students surrounded the footprints and some tire tracks with cardboard borders to contain the casting liquid, then poured it in. They added paper tags listing evidence numbers, case numbers, location, offense and crime scene photographer.

"A lot of times, people hear things in the news and say, oh, the police aren't doing enough, they're not doing very much about that," said Amanda Miller, a 16-year-old junior. "But after this, you sort of get the idea that there's so much more going on when they try to solve a crime."  Senior Annie Liu, 17, said the course has prompted her to consider going into premed and specializing in forensic science. "It's definitely put it in my mind as something I might want to do," she said.

Rubins, 34, said interest in forensics has been growing and several of his students have gone on to study at colleges like John Jay, which specializes in criminal justice, and Pace University, which offers forensics as a major.  "It's a different way of learning science," he said. "Biology, physics, chemistry, earth science -- you name the science, it's involved in forensics."