These videos help grasp how we identify prints and are fun science experiments. One search on YouTube will give way to hundreds of “DIY” videos on how to lift fingerprints in the comfort of your own home. The right forensic equipment not only allows you to do your job but it keeps potential health and safety hazards at bay, such as skin, throat, and eye irritation caused by the emission of smoke and fumes. As mentioned earlier, the process of “lifting” prints is intended to make those fingerprints visible to the naked eye, but to do so, you must have the proper equipment. Ninhydrin is the most common substance when lifting prints off porous surfaces. How do we process fingerprints on such delicate surfaces? Fingerprints on Porous Surfacesįingerprints are not only left on hard surfaces like countertops, door knobs, or weapons, but they can be left and lifted from porous items such as paper, untreated wood, or cardboard. In contrast, a patent fingerprint is visible to the naked eye because the finger was pressed into blood, paint, mud, etc. These prints, known as latent fingerprints, are invisible to the naked eye since they were imprinted with only oil residue. Our fingerprints leave behind residues of oils in the shape of our ridges, and as we’ve established, each of these shapes is unique to the individual. You can even leave prints on your body… or someone else’s body (hence how bad guys are caught). Patent FingerprintsĮverything you touch throughout the day, your keyboard, phone, laptop, door handle, has your fingerprints all over it. There are so many tiny characteristics in each person’s fingerprint that they might look similar at first glance, but the reality is that no two prints are the same. Remember the ridges and furrows we mentioned above? The raised and recessed parts of the fingerprint? Scientists carefully look at each print's details (the shape's position, how many ridges there are, the size of the furrows) to uniquely link someone to that print. One must pay attention to more than just the print pattern when examining fingerprints, although this is an easy identifier. But what if your neighbor or a family member has the same shaped patterns on the same fingers? Can scientists tell your prints and their prints apart? Well, good news, you won’t be getting charged with any of your neighbor’s crimes even if they have seemingly “identical” prints because, in reality, even if they look identical, they aren’t identical at all! Maybe you have mostly whorl prints-some double loop, some plain- and a few loop-shaped prints- mainly radial. The most common of these prints are loops which make up about 60% of the population, whorls make up about 35%, and the least common, arches, which make up about 5%. What pattern do these ridges and furrows create? Maybe whirlpools? Hills? Teardrops? Or perhaps you see all three. If you look closely, you can see the outlines of your prints' ridges (raised lines) and furrows (recessed lines). Some of us have brown hair, blonde hair, maybe we have freckles, no freckles, green eyes, or blue eyes we’re all unique in our own way- including our fingerprints. The human population varies in how we all look our outside defining characteristics. The Three Different Types of Fingerprints
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