The other week we went down to Garthdee to check out a class on bloodstain pattern analysis that was conducted by second year forensic students and was ran by Applications Supervisor Mairi Thomson. The class allowed students to investigate what happens to blood at a crime scene.

The students used bovine blood to illustrate how the blood behaves in certain situations.

The distance and direction of blood was recorded to see how blood patterns would appear through travel. The purpose of this experiment was to show how horizontal motion and blood dropping height affects the resulting shape of the bloodstains.

This experiment allows the calculation of volume and diameter of blood drops originating from various objects that may be found at a crime scene.

Various objects such as knives were used to measure the blood falling.

It was so cool getting to have an insight into what the Forensic students are up to and the type of projects they undertake, as it is so different to other courses at uni. It really showed how vast and wide-spread the courses are at RGU and that there are so many facilities to use for students. We are so unbelievably lucky to have access to equipment like this as it really sets students up for being able to work with these skills they have obtained from the course.

Katie x