Summer sleuths test evidence and DNA in Behrend CSI course

ERIE, Pa. — In a lab in the Otto Behrend Science Building at Penn State Behrend, students hovered around several bullet casings, making notes as they looked for marks that might identify the manufacturer.

The scene was missing the “dun-dun” intro from TV’s “Law & Order,” but the students were still getting a chance to be detectives.

“Forensic Files” was one of more than 100 courses offered this summer through College for Kids, a six-week summer enrichment program at Behrend. The course, which was designed for students ages 10 to 14, included a ballistics exercise, with casings from 10 manufacturers.

When a student noticed a spot on one of the casings, the class began to talk. Was it blood?

“No,” said the instructor, Dan Fenner, a chemistry teacher at Maplewood High School. “These are not crime scene casings.”

Fenner led the group through 12 stations, which were set with various tools to learn how weapons might be identified. The students took turns pressing the tools into clay, making impressions. Then, they used other markings in clay to match them to the appropriate tool.

The class also featured fiber analysis, fingerprinting, handwriting analysis and the recovery of damaged documents.

Fenner augmented the hands-on activities with videos from “Forensic Files,” a documentary series that originally aired on TLC. On the final day, he set up a mock crime scene.

“It was fun,” said Joshua Williams, 13. “We even did our own DNA.”

For that exercise, they used Gatorade to conduct a simple DNA lab.

Charlotte Will, 11, signed up at the suggestion of her mother. They had played a murder-mystery board game, which Charlotte enjoyed.

“I liked how we learn something different every day,” she said.

Sebastian Swift, 12, liked the explosions — an experiment with a water bottle and menthol.

“Anything to get them excited about science,” Fenner said.