Illustrated Guide to Home Forensic Science Experiments

Part IV. Revealing Latent Fingerprints

Even someone who knows nothing else about forensics knows about fingerprints. The individuality of fingerprints had been generally accepted as established by forensic scientists and courts by the early 20th century, and the billions of fingerprint specimens taken since then have confirmed fingerprints as unique individual characteristics. Figure IV.1 shows a full fingerprint that we made by pressing one of our fingers to a stamp pad and then rolling it against a sheet of paper.

Figure IV.1. A typical full fingerprint taken under controlled conditions

Unfortunately, prints found at a crime scene are usually partial, ...