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How to Do a Science Project on Fingerprints

Fingerprint Experiments

Fingerprint science projects introduce to students the techniques used in forensic science. The project given here can be used in the classroom as part of a lesson on fingerprints. It can also be used as the starting point for a science fair project, by adding on to these basic techniques to answer various questions. Ideas for additional projects include whether identical twins have similar fingerprints; whether the age of the fingerprint affects your ability to lift it from a material; and whether it is possible to make prints appear in color.

Lifting Latent Prints

Make a fingerprint by touching your fingers to your forehead and then touching a surface, such as a table top. The oils on your forehead will help make the fingerprint stronger.

Dust for prints by using a paintbrush to brush a small amount of talcum powder onto the surface. The powder will adhere to the oils left behind by your finger and the fingerprint will become visible. Blow gently to remove excess talcum powder.

Place a piece of clear tape over the fingerprint and press down on the tape gently. Carefully lift the tape up and then tape it onto a piece of black paper or black cardboard. The print should be clearly visible against the black background.

Repeat the steps above using prints made on different materials. For example, use metal, wood, colored plastic and clear plastic. Discuss whether this technique works well with all materials or only with some types of material.

LIfting Prints from a Clear Surface

Make a fingerprint by touching your fingers to your forehead and then touching a small, clear object, such as a plastic or glass cup or plastic bag.

Place the object carefully into a plastic zip-close bag.

Place the plastic cap from a 1-liter soda bottle into the plastic bag, so that it is open side up.

Squeeze two or three drops of super glue into the cap. Seal the bag shut. Leave the bag for about 30 minutes.

Hold the plastic bag away from your face and open it. Carefully remove and set aside the cap and then remove the object with the fingerprint. The fingerprints on it should be clearly visible.

Use this super glue technique to lift prints from a variety of different materials. This technique is usually used to life prints from flexible materials that are hard to dust. Try this technique on fabric, vinyl, plastic or other materials that you can think of. Discuss whether this technique is useful for all materials, or only for certain types of materials.

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• Science Spot: Forensic Science Lesson Plans - Fingerprints
• Julian Trubin: What are Fingerprints?
• Reach Out Michigan: Fingerprinting: A Lesson on Classification

About the Author

Since graduating with a degree in biology, Lisa Magloff has worked in many countries. Accordingly, she specializes in writing about science and travel and has written for publications as diverse as the "Snowmass Sun" and "Caterer Middle East." With numerous published books and newspaper and magazine articles to her credit, Magloff has an eclectic knowledge of everything from cooking to nuclear reactor maintenance.

Photo Credits

fingerprint image by dip from Fotolia.com

Science Experiments with Fingerprints: A Low-Tech & Effective Forensic Technique

• Dawn Marcotte
• Categories : Great ideas for science fair projects
• Tags : Homework help & study guides

Before There Was DNA

The science of fingerprinting has allowed law enforcement agencies to identify and prosecute criminals since the early 1900s. Fingerprints are unique to each individual and cannot be altered in the same way physical appearance can be changed. Until the advent of DNA identification, fingerprinting was the primary scientific method of identifying a specific person and excluding all others.

These science experiments will introduce you to a few of the methods of taking fingerprints and allow you to practice identifying the owner of the fingerprints. This practical, low-tech experiment is effective and fun, making it a great science fair project.

How to Take Fingerprints

Use a standard ink pad to practice taking your fingerprints. Utilize ink that washes off with soap for easier clean up. Gently roll your index finger across the top of the ink pad, and then gently roll the inked finger across a white index card. The ridges and whorls on the finger should be clear to read. If they are not then keep practicing until you can make your own fingerprint clearly.

Practice lifting fingerprints from glass with the use of cocoa powder, a piece of hard candy and a drinking glass. Put the candy in your mouth until it is sticky. Remove the candy from your mouth using the index finger and thumb. Once both fingers are sticky grasp the glass so the index fingerprint is on the outside of the glass. Dust the outside of the glass with the cocoa powder and gently brush away the excess powder. Place the sticky side of clear tape over the fingerprint and pull away. Place the tape onto a white index card so the fingerprint is clearly visible. Repeat as necessary to master the skill.

Comparing Fingerprints For Identification

Fingerprints are not useful unless there is something to compare them with!

Get a friend, family member, or an attendee at your science fair to volunteer to have their fingerprints taken. Randomly choose three fingers and take the prints. Compare your fingerprints to these samples. How are they the same? How are they different? Use a magnifying glass to compare the prints if necessary. If time is available, repeat the process with additional volunteers, including those who are a different age from you. Compare the prints to see how age might affect the size or other factors of the print.

The final project will be to identify an unknown print. Have the same people who volunteered to participate earlier stand in a room with a clear plastic jar. Give them each a piece of hard candy and show them how to leave their print. Ask them to choose one person to leave a print on the jar without telling you who. Leave the room long enough for them to leave a fingerprint. Take the fingerprint from the glass and determine whose it is.

Completing this experiment will create a better understanding of forensic procedures.

Resources and Photo Credit

The History of Fingerprints, https://www.onin.com/fp/fphistory.html

The Thin Blue Line, https://www.policensw.com/info/fingerprints/indexfinger.html

Photo Credit: Flickr/Kevin Dooley

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Teaching the Scientific Method with 7 Easy Science Experiments

I’m sure you have seen long, drawn-out lesson plans for teaching the scientific method in the elementary grades.

It doesn’t really have to be that difficult to teach kids how to work through the steps.

What if I told you there was an easy way to introduce the scientific method to your students and help reinforce science-related skills?

Well, there is! Maybe I should say I have seven easy ways to teach and reinforce the scientific method to students.

I actually came up with 7 Easy Science Experiments that do just that. (TIP: Use the code THANKYOU for 10% off today!)

They are easy, fun, and engaging.

Easy Experiments for Teaching the Scientific Method

I know you are wondering what these experiments entail. And you probably want to know just how easy they really are. Trust me. I like easy. They are easy.

The 7 easy science experiments include:

·        Rainbow Milk Experiment

·        Tornado in a Bottle Experiment

·        Fingerprint Science Experiment (Read more about this one HERE )

·        Marshmallow Toothpick Tower Experiment

·        Coffee Filter Pigment Experiment

·        Flubber Slime Experiment

·        Clean and Dirty Penny Experiment

  So, what’s in each book?

Each experiment can be used as a stand-alone project and includes:

·        Directions for each experiment

·        Full digital version

·        Student flipbooks (fill in the blank, observation notes, experiment notes)

What is the digital version?

The digital version is the exact same lesson including the student worksheets, but it’s all done online.

Students get the same workbook pages on Google slides and can fill out the whole thing online and then click “present” to share their saved information with a teacher or parent.

This digital version can be incorporated into a virtual learning environment in a lot of ways.

You can make your own videos and upload them.

Maybe you don’t want to make a video. There are tons of them on YouTube that can be used when teaching the scientific method.

It’s versatile and super easy to adapt to your teaching style and teaching environment.

It can all be easily added to Google Drive, so you have the option of creating a full virtual experience for students.

Ways to Incorporate the 7 Easy Experiments Lessons into the Classroom

There are a lot of ways to use these lessons for teaching the scientific method.

Use it for an end-of-week, fun day activity on Fridays.

It makes a great reward lesson once students have accomplished a class goal.

It can be used for extension or enrichment activities.

What Other Teachers are Saying:

Conclusion:

This bundle seriously has everything you need to teach and reinforce the scientific method. It has booklets, worksheets, directions, tab books, and a full digital version of the activities too.

Do you have any tried-and-true tricks for teaching the scientific method? Share your ideas with us!

P.S. Two ways to grab a copy of the 7 Easy Science Experiments

Shop The Sprinkle Topped Shop and use the code: THANKYOU for a discounted price!

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You may also like, distance learning math activities for a younger crowd, blank handwriting worksheets, formative assessment in the classroom, using forensics in your science experiments, handwriting made fun.

Fingerprinting Science Activity for Kids

By: Author Jacquie Fisher

Posted on Published: April 30, 2019

Categories Kids Activities & Crafts , Science Experiments

This fingerprinting science activity for kids is a great for a DIY spy and detective party, learning about the human body or at-home CSI idea!

My daughter is a HUGE fan of mysteries!

In fact, that’s the topic of this week’s book list: 15 Marvelous Mystery Books for Kids .  She enjoys scouring the pages for clues and trying to come up with a solution before the story reveals it to her.

Fingerprinting for Kids: Science Activities

In real life, she asks a lot of those “detective” questions — How, Why, Who? — the perfect opening to creative problem solving.

During one of our recent mystery reads, she was intrigued by the idea of fingerprints. 

So I thought we would try to learn more about this since so many detective books refer to “finding their prints!” 🙂  We’ll outline a few techniques we used along with affiliate links for items we used during our ‘spy mission’!

Fingerprints for Kids

I always remember thinking the idea of fingerprints was really interesting.  If you grew up in the 1970’s or 1980’s, you might recall the super cool Ed Emberley Fingerprint Fun books where you could make animals using your fingerprints.

Fingerprint science is popular with kids who love spy & detective activities and a fun experiment that explores one area of the human body — if you missed the Science of Sound Waves experiment , hop over and try that one too as kids get a big kick out of the different ways our body works!

Our first step was to get a close-up look at our fingerprints.

Now most parents will tell you all you need to do is give a kids some chocolate and you’ll find a messy set of prints all over the walls 😉

Or there’s always the good old fashion FingerPrint Pad ink kits too.

But I thought we’d try a less messy approach 🙂

We used some Crayola Model Magic Clay and had each member of the family press one of their fingers into it to create a fingerprint.

Playdough didn’t work so well for us so I would suggest something more firm.  If you want to preserve the fingerprints, I would use a good oven bake clay so they are more permenant.

Once we had our prints, we grabbed our much-loved Kids Magnifying Glass — seriously, you need to have one of these around the house for the kids to use — AMAZING science tool that is super cheap!

As we looked at the prints, we noticed a few really cool things!

Fingerprint Science Observations

There were a few thing we noticed right away after taking a close look at the fingerprints we gathered:

• Not all of our fingerprints looked the same even though we are all related.

• Some of our prints have a swirl pattern to them while others looked liked ‘mountains’.

• There were a different numbers of lines in each of our fingerprints — sometimes the lines are really close together and sometimes they are farther apart.

Even though the clay was pretty cool, we wanted a more detailed view of our prints. 

So we pulled out the baby powder and put some on our fingers. (If you don’t have any powder in the house, try flour or powdered sugar instead).

Then we placed a piece of Clear Packaging Tape over the powdered finger and Voila! instant fingerprint!

I know – pretty awesome isn’t it?!

Hold the tape up to the light and you can really see all the lines and ridges plus a very clear view of the fingerprint pattern.

We also taped our prints to black construction paper so we could view them again later.

Dusting for Fingerprints

But we still wanted to answer one more question — where can we find fingerprints?

So we talked about places around the house that people were most likely to touch — doorknobs, the handle on the fridge, glasses, etc.

Then we grabbed our baby powder and got to work. 

We used a Makeup Brush to lightly tap baby powder onto the handles of the fridge.  Be sure not to brush it on hard or you can brush away the prints – they’re delicate little suckers.

And then we also tapped some powder onto our breakfast glasses to see if we could lift some prints off them with the tape too.

We used the clear packing tape to cover the powdered areas and then placed the tape onto a dark blue construction paper so we could see if there were any prints.

We could easily tell that some of the prints belonged to Mom or Dad just due to their size. 

Then we used the prints we created in the pink clay as a comparison to our newly found ones.

The Science Behind Fingerprints: Forensic Analysis

So what can you learn from collecting fingerprints? 

Quite a few things!

The study of fingerprints is called dactyloscopy and is used by detectives (such as the police, FBI and those that investigate crime scenes) and also medical personnel.

First, everyone has different fingerprints — no two are alike (kind of like snowflakes). 

And yes, even twins will have different prints.

Here’s a great post from Livestrong about how fingerprints form in the womb .

Now even though we all have different fingerprints, there are really one three common types of prints:  arches, loops and whorls.

After you create your own fingerprints at home, match them up to the prints in these photos to learn more about your individual fingerprint pattern. 

Be sure to look at all the prints of family members — do you all fall into the same pattern?

Doctors are researching how fingerprint patterns can tell us more about a person’s health — for example, they’ve found that those with ridges closer together are more likely to develop certain diseases later in life.

If you’d like to learn more about fingerprints, browse these affiliate links for great hands-on science kits — they make great gifts for kids who love the idea of playing detective or those interested in forensic science:

4M Fingerprint Kit for Kids

You can also head over to Wonderopolis for more fingerprint fun for kids .

Don’t forget to check out the titles on our Be a Detective: 15 Marvelous Mystery Books for Kids!

More Hands-on Science Activities for Kids:

3D Phases of the Moon Project

LEGO Water Cycle Activity