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Fingerprints

© Zany

Everyone has fingerprints. Even you! When you touch something, sweat and oils from glands in the skin leave a fingerprint behind. This fingerprint is unique. This fingerprint cannot be changed. This fingerprint can be used for identification.

First, look at the History of Fingerprints. It starts way back at about 1000 BCE with the Chinese using fingerprints to sign documents. But it was not until 1880 that Dr Henry Faulds proposed the use of fingerprints as a means of identification. (Also check out History of Fingerprints, Significant Dates and Events and History of Fingerprinting).

So what are fingerprints? Fingerprints are impressions created by ridges on the skin. What makes them individual or unique? It's the number, location and shape of the specific ridges. But the ridges are not straight or even continuous. They have certain traits or characteristics called minutiae--small or minor detail. CrimTrac's fingerprint site lists the principle categories of minutiae with definitions for each. Nor are the ridges randomly arranged. There are three basic pattern grouping (arch, loop and whorl) from which seven or eight different pattern subgroups can be identified. How easy it is to make an identification using fingerprints? For a short discussion on this topic, take a look at Fingerprint Identification.

There are lots of neat things you can do with fingerprints. You can pretend to be a detective and lift fingerprints from a glass using superglue and a plastic bag. Or you can investigate your own fingerprints. How about trying the fingerprint match game or learn how to classify fingerprints? Fingerprinting has a set of five experiments that examine why we leave fingerprints through to dusting for them. We can also examine why and how fingerprints are used in a criminal investigation. There are three types of prints: visible, plastic and latent. First we have to prepare the prints, then examine the evidence. But don't get too wrapped up in the investigation that you forget to have fun.

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