<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/6f45c3d8-c18c-4e97-aef1-8308d48e5cbe/svlogo.jpeg" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/6f45c3d8-c18c-4e97-aef1-8308d48e5cbe/svlogo.jpeg" width="40px" /> Want to learn live? Enroll in ScioCamp.
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<aside> 🔎 Course content was made from Forensics lead faculty, including:
<aside> 🕵🏾‍♂️ Harshit Kolisetty, ScioVirtual executive director and molecular biology student at UC Berkeley. Harshit has taught forensics numerous times at ScioVirtual and will be teaching Chemistry Lab this summer.
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<aside> 🕵🏽‍♀️ Ankita Kundu, NJ Science Olympiad gold medalist from WW-P North. Ankita has taught forensics and managed chemistry courses at ScioVirtual.
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<aside> 🕵🏻‍♀️ Victoria Li, NJ Science Olympiad gold medalist from WW-P North. Victoria has taught Crime Busters and Disease Detectives at ScioVirtual.
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Harshit teaching blood types for ScioVirtual’s level II live course on forensics.
Welcome to Division B Crime Busters, the illegitimate child of Division C Forensics.
At first glance, Crime Busters may seem like a simple test of memorization of identifying mystery samples and their potential uses at the crime scene. However, one must understand the underlying chemistry and biology concepts in order to succeed. On top of the overall crime scene that students need to solve for the event, Crime Busters tests often contain tons of trivia questions that make up a significant portion of the point total. More than anything, be ready to adapt: test writers are creative with their test styles so you’ll need both logical thinking and your knowledge to do well.
In that sense, the event is easy to get into, but difficult to progress higher past that point. Every single test will be structured around a crime case: Division B will usually be some sort of theft or vandalism, but I’ve found that Division C is just full of murders. Therefore, the first thing you should always do is skim through the crime scene and suspect descriptions and underline important information.
Crime Busters (when in-person) can be generally split into a lab portion and a test portion. The lab consists of powder, and sometimes liquid, identification. It would definitely be helpful to have a comprehensive chart of how each substance reacts and behaves to aid you during the lab. Do not just have a flowchart in which some of the substances will be identified by process of elimination (i.e identifying a substance because it reacted with nothing)— you’re going to be screwed for certain competitions in which not all reactants will be available (i.e. iodine, hydrochloric acid, etc.). Especially since a lot of competitions have been virtual lately, so you’ll just be given descriptions instead, which often will not include things like visual and smell but have “mistakes” in the descriptions they offer. For example, if they give you a chart with 5 reactions for each powder and ask you to identify, 1-2 of the reactions will be incorrect and you’ll have to list out the mistakes as well.
Ignore for virtual competitions There are often other smaller labs throughout the room, usually chromatography. It takes a good 10-15 minutes for chromatography to develop, so if you notice your test having one, it’s a good idea to get one set up first. Chromatography itself is not hard but it’s easy to mess up. Make sure to:
Overall just know which partner is going to do which section (the person who does lab will likely finish early and help with sections of the test). Keep an eye on the clock so you’ll have time to discuss, choose a suspect, and write out your reasoning. Also try to keep a mental checklist on who the most likely perpetrator is based on your evidence so you won’t have to go back later.
Here are the steps one can take to go from an absolute beginner to the next Edmond Locard: