A group of middle school students in Taipei City, all fans of the popular U.S. television series Crime Scene Investigation, has discovered a way to detect one drop of blood in half a swimming pool of water.
Wego Private Senior High School students Lin Chien-yu, Chang Hong-chi and Chan Po-cheng are fascinated by the ingenuity CSI investigators use to break tough cases. They wondered if they, too, could devise a method to help solve crimes.
“We wanted to see if we could come up with a more effective means of blood analysis,” said Chan.
With help from the well-known forensic scientist Henry Lee, they discovered that methylene blue can be used to detect minute traces of blood. Their method is even more sensitive than that used by Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, the students said.
Their findings garnered a science prize in chemistry at the Taipei Middle and Elementary School Science Fair, and the award for Most Innovative Project.
“We are considering applying for patents for our method,” one of the students said.
Lin Tzu-hsiang, police chief of the Juifang Substation in New Taipei City, encouraged the students to attend the police academy in the future. “Then they can get the education they need to become top investigators in our field,” he said.
(This article originally appeared in The Liberty Times May 8.)