In the past our department's contributions to the general education curriculum were limited mainly to environmental, health, and nutritional aspects of chemistry. No longer. This summer Professor Jake Plummer is teaching a brand new course to showcase the scientific analysis made famous in television shows like CSI. Plummer is pulling out all the stops and not limiting his course to chemical applications because, as he states: "...forensic science is a multidisciplinary science, [so] we will cover concepts from physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics." His course includes a laboratory component where students get an introduction to exciting field topics such as fingerprinting and blood splatter analysis. The photograph below shows Plummer ready to strike a "blood"-soaked sponge to create a splatter for analysis. Our department is very excited about this new course and we can only guess that the students are rather excited as well.
