Today, I traveled to a Girl Scout Crime Scene Chemistry activity to earn a badge and have fun learning about the Scientific Method as well as my fingerprints. First, when I arrived, I walked into the room where all the girls were and sat down. There were different materials set up on the tables with table linen. Once everyone showed up, we introduced ourselves, our grade levels, and got started with our main experiment.

The imaginary scenario was that a grandma, who was baking cookies and taste-tested them, suddenly didn’t feel well and went to a hospital. The doctor discovered that they might have consumed aspirin. But how? The aspirin might have accidentally been combined with the ingredients in the cookies since she always keeps her baking supplies near her aspirin. Safety gear, such as safety goggles, plastic aprons, and gloves were put on before we continued. For our experiment, we observed which combinations determined that the ingredient was aspirin, cornstarch, baking soda, etc. I worked with a partner, and we took turns putting a variety of ingredients in the different circle-shaped areas. We also observed divergent colors, like deep purple, dark blue, hues of oranges, and white, that the combinations had formed.

After sharing our thoughts and observations about the experiment we conducted, we started preparing for the fingerprint activity. We were given a sheet that had specific types of fingerprints and used distinctive methods to find out which types of fingerprints we had. For the first method, we put tape on our fingers and rubbed our fingerprint on until we could see it. Of course, it didn’t work for me. The second method was to rub your finger in pencil, apply tape on your finger, and peel it off to see which fingerprint you had. That one worked the best for me. The last one was to color your fingers with marker and stamp your finger onto an index card to see which finger print it was. I could barely tell which fingerprint I had with that method.

Soon, it was time to go home. The girls and I got our badges for doing the experiment, and I met some of the girls too. We chatted and laughed together. In conclusion, I had fun at this recreational place for Girl Scouts. It might have taken 30 minutes to drive there, but it was worth it! I can’t wait to go again!