1. What physical evidence did you find at the victim’s home? A box of matches, a space heater, beer bottles, Natalie’s wallet, a V-shaped burn pattern, burned outlet, a protected surface on the ground, crazed glass, and a puddle-shaped burn pattern.

2. Describe the process that you used to take a sample of the puddle-shaped burn pattern on the floor. Why did you also take samples from the portion of the floor that was not burned? First, I took the chisel to loosen up some of the wood chips in the puddle-shaped area. Then I used I took tweezers to put loose wood chips into an air tight sealed can. Samples needed to be taken from the portion of the floor that was not burned because you need a control to compare to how the wood was …show more content…

The spectrometer shoots a beam of light of a certain wavelength on the sample which contains two different molecules.) A detector measures the intensity of the light that leaves the sample. Molecules in the sample absorb some light; the light that leaves the sample is less intense than the light that went into the sample. The absorption of light helps determine the different concentrations in the samples. You start by looking at the height and width of the ethanol peak. You use the units on the x-axis and y-axis to determine the width/height of the peak. Since the peak is similar to an equilateral triangle, I can use the formula for the area of one to calculate the area of the peak. After the calculation is complete, I located the area of the peak on the y-axis, drew a straight line to the line, and went straight down to where it connected.

10. Explain how the evidence helped you to determine how Trevor died and whether the fire was accidental or arson. The test with the spectrometer confirms that the carboxyhemoglobin in his system was normal, which means he did not inhale smoke during the fire. It mostly indicates that he did not die in the fire. Blood tests were run on Trevor and he had oxycodone in his system. When I visited the hospital to question Natalie, she had denied many things. On her file, it was shown that she had oxycodone in her system also. On the space heater, there was a piece of cloth on it