An incident caused by fire

 

What will happen when the crime displayed on TV takes place in real life? How does the scene look like? What are the information the criminals left and who should be suspected?

 

Do not worry, this is not the TV show CSI: Miami I am talking about. This is the CSI:NDB – I am. Last week, our AP Bio class have made an amazing mystery-solving assignment, CSI NDB. In this assignment, our class was divided into three groups, and each group had to make a project to simulate a criminal scene in which the victim, a pig in all the cases, was killed because one of his body system went wrong. Each group was assigned with different body system and we had no idea which body system others were doing, so we could only figure out who was the murder and which body system failed by analysing each group’s project. My group had

My group had nervous system and we came up with an interesting plot. There were three main characters. Mr. Piggy, Mrs. Piggy and her aunt. They all lived together in downtown San Jose and there was always fighting going on in his house. The victim, Mr. Piggy, was an imperious male pig who suffered diabetes type 2 and had to take insulin every day. He had a tense relationship with the aunt and they always argued with each other. He was also rude to his wife Mrs.Piggy and constantly insulted her. Finally, Mrs. Piggy could not tolerate him anymore so she took the chemicals she collected at her working place and replaced the insulin with the chemicals; the chemical served to paralyze Mr. Piggy’s central nervous system where motor neurons were located so that he would not be able to move his muscle. Mrs. Piggy then lit the house on fire so that Mr. Piggy died in the fire while he was paralyzed.

After finishing the plot, we had to start our project. At the first glance, the project seemed to be complicated. Davis made a google doc for the group and put on the information needed. It was very organized so that we made sure everyone stayed on the track. We also divided the whole project into small stations so that the load of work would be distributed equally.

(My group members!)

We made five stations for our project; the first station was an introduction video, Davis was the director and the rest group members played different roles. It was hard to act seriously and there were many laughters during the shooting. Simone Conde acted as the aunt and she had to mimic an old woman’s voice; she did a really good job of it and the best performance award should go to her. The video also included an interview of the deceased’s family and neighbor. In the interview, the neighbor talked about how Mrs. Piggy was a nice woman and the aunt had a bad temper.

Our second station was a character poster and it provided the basic information of each character. We listed the age, relationship with Mr.Piggy and occupation of each character. To make Mrs. Piggy more innocent, we changed her occupation. Our group made her a cleaner instead of someone who worked in the science field. We also made the aunt a smoker so the fire looked like an accident caused by cigar.

The third station was a house map created by Simone Conde and it showed the structure of Mr. Piggy’s house and where the fire took place.

The fourth station was the coroner’s report. This station showed the health history of Mr.Piggy. Since Mr. Piggy had diabetes 2, he had to take insulin every day before the meal. This detail was an important clue for other class peers because it could be something in Mr. Piggy’s  insulin that killed him. The report also included the analysis of Mr. Piggy’s body. Apparently an unknown chemical was found in his stomach and a part of his III Oculomotor and the autonomic nervous system was damaged.

The fifth station was a presentation about “what does fire do to your body?” In this presentation, Jennifer talked about different degrees of burning damages. Jennifer also mentioned how to check whether Mr. piggy died before the fire or after the fire, that was to check his throat to see if there were dusts. If not, then apparently Mr.Piggy died before the fire, implying it was a murder instead of an accident.

Our class peers soon figured out that Mrs. Piggy was the murder and Mr.Piggy’s death was caused by the dysfunction of his nervous system. As the mystery unveiled, our group then showed a google presentation to the class. The presentation provided a thorough information about the human nervous system, and that was the core part of our project – to deliver the knowledge and educate our peers. Finally, to make the activity more engaging, we created a pop quiz and a blank diagram of the nervous system to be filled in.

Other groups did a good job too. Their presentations were amazing and creative. Rebecca Zheng‘s group used costumes to act as animals which I thought was super funny.(Check her blog about her group project here) Amanda Reshke’s group did immune system, and it turned out to be very a very creative crime. The victim’s immune system was damaged due to the infection of HIV, so his body could no longer fight against the foreign invaders and he was eventually killed by his own cat with a parasite.

I loved every group’s project and I highly recommend our class to do it more often. It is such a helpful project because it helps everyone to learn and review what we learned in class. It also helps us to develop team-work skills because after all it IS a team work. I am looking forward to more projects like  CSI- NDB in future! (probably in college)

CSI picture:

CSI -Crime Scene Investigation. CBS, 2014. Web. 18 May 2015.

Group member pictures: Facebook