Heriberto Rodriguez

Pod 2
6/3/19

Photo Essay
It's All About May

First day of internship and was so successful! We

did a lot of research and taking notes on our brand
new project. We were introduce to new chemicals,
such as, indanedione and DFO. We were also
going to see if zinc, which was a chemical that I
was already familiar with, makes a significant
different to improve the fingerprints.

Through our process we kept writing what we

wanted to accomplish for that day. This is where
we wrote down the questions we wanted to answer
about the chemicals. We also had a sheet of paper
that we wrote questions we wanted our mentor to
answer. I took charge on writing and making sure
we had a valid answer to check off the questions
from the board. It was a great way for us to track
our progress through the whole group.

While researching about indanedione we saw that

there was a specific procedure on how
indanedione should be applied. Our mentor also
wanted us to come prepared into the lab and be
ready with all of the material. We pieced together
what we felt fit best to the experiment we wanted
to conduct. I was really glad that we had a lot of
freedom when it came to procedure and there was
no hand holding.
This is part of the office space we were allowed to
enter and use. When we didn’t bring a computer
we were offered to use a desktop. We can only use
them if they weren’t occupied. Sadly when it’s
around mid day everyone is there at their desk.
Thankfully I borrowed my mother’s laptop which
helped us a lot to collaborate because of the
accessibility for our group.

We started to gather the materials we wanted to

use for our experiment. Thermal paper as seen
here is just a receipt. We also noticed that it needs
to be processed in a different way from other
surfaces like regular paper. Instead of dipping into
the solution we had to submerge the paper for 24.
These different processes were what our mentor
wanted us to know before entering the lab.

We planned to use different surfaces and

substances, so to stay organized we labled how
much of each fingerprint series we wanted to
create. The heat helps the fingerprints develop the
indanedione to show full fluorescence. The
indanedione is supposed to react to the amino
acids in the substance. That's what motivated us to
try other substance that contain different amounts
of amino acids. With all these criteria we wanted
to know what we wanted to test before entering
the lab.
When we finally got into the lab with all of our
martials we wanted to lay out the porous surface
by each group. It started getting confusing about
what was what so it was beneficial to start
categorizing. It was necessary for us to do so for
us to not misplace or waste materials in the lab.
We had cardboard, paper, thermal paper, and
wood. They all had fingerprints applied on them at
the time this picture was taken so they were ready
to be applied in a solution.

It was extremely important for us to measure the

amount of chemicals for us to get precise results.
We ended up having to double up our chemicals
for us to have a good amount of solution. After
researching for a while it was extremely
interesting seeing the chemicals in person after all
that we have read. In this photo is indanedione in
its power form. We also got to use zinc and that
was cool because of how much it is in a lot of
daily essentials.

After soaking and submerging our prints in the

indanedione or zinc solution we didn’t notice
anything right off the bat. Of course the prints still
needed 1 more step but we weren’t sure when we
will start noticing color. With the thermal paper
like I said before needs to be submerge in the
indanedione solution for 24 hours. This was the
case because thermal paper is sensitive and has
extra ink on it so we needed to follow that exact
process to have a successful outcome.
After the heating process of the iron, heat press, or
keeping them in room temperature we placed
them under the 455 nanometer light or also called
ALS light. These prints were developed in room
temperature and they showed decent fluorescence
which is what we were grading the prints on. The
ALS light is a very bright blue color but for the
safety of our eyes and to capture a picture we used
orange filters to contrast from the light. We took
photos of each type of print, surface, and the
development of heat.

We used a professional camera to take

photographs of the prints. We took 2 photos of the
same print, one of them up close usually 1 or 2
prints are in the picture, and the next picture is of
the whole series. It was really helpful taking
photos of the prints because we would reference
them through our writing process. Also if we
didn’t give the fingerprint a score it gave us the
opportunity to do it after the photo was taken.

Our scoring of the fingerprints was based off of

the fluorescent of the fingerprint. It was necessary
to do so because when comparing DFO’s
fluorescent. We specifically looked at
fluorescence because that’s what gave the
fingerprint detail. Although DFO is darker in color
it was clear to us how it was better than
indanedione with it’s fluorescence.
After we were able to collect our data we started
to create a draft of our final validation report. We
research and read many sample validation reports
to see what ours should include. We created the
structure to be able to be able to follow and not
get lost. We made sure we were including
methodology, specificity, sensitivity to help us
make our paper as thoughtful as possible.

Through our writing processes we would get

critique rom our mentor to improve our validation
report. It was multiple times online or in person
we would get that feedback and immediately
implement. Our final time receiving feedback we
did a group reading to get those last minute fixes
to the report. After that session I was glad that we
were close to finishing the report. Adding those
changes was the last step for us to complete our
validation report.

On our final day we were fortunate enough to

have a chance to get a full tour of the police
department. We got to meet so much people and
get run downs on what they do for the police
department. One of my favorite parts of the tour
was getting to go into the evidence room. Geneva
a mother to another junior at High Tech gave us a
super neat in-depth tour of the evidence room. She
told us stories and showed us the process of
collecting people’s evidence.