Learning Intentions: Today we are learning about forgery. How we can detect forgery in handwriting and counterfeit money.

Success Criteria: You will be successful when you can show how to complete handwriting analysis.

Hand Writing Analysis Activity

Students must write their name and the following sentence on one page for comparison. 

Your Name: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Students then write a letter to Santa on a page to be collected and handed out again for students to analyse.

Students are to complete the following in a table of analysis

Describe handwriting by referring to the following:

Form: Shape, angle, and curves of the letters.

Lines: Thickness of the lines made by the pen or pencil and the amount of pressure the writer used when writing.

Arrangement: The layout and the spacing of letters and words across the page.

Content: Spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Who wrote the Santa Letter?

How to tell if your money is fake or real

Police are warning Aussies to check if they have fake money in their wallets after counterfeit banknotes were discovered in circulation. Here’s how to know if your cash is real

Aussies have been warned to check their $50 notes very carefully after several fake ones were recently offered to shop owners across the nation.

A Darwin business handed in fake money to Northern Territory Police last week once they realised the $50 bills they’d been handed didn’t look quite right.

“The note has a paper texture and the security window had visible defects, having been glued on,” a police spokesman said.

WHAT IS COUNTERFEIT MONEY?
Counterfeit money is fraudulent, or fake, money that has been made to look like the real thing.

People in Australia can be sent to jail for up to 12 years for making money or using money that they know is fake.

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR MONEY IS REAL
The Reserve Bank of Australia said there are many different features on each banknote that can help you tell if it is fake or real.

If you tilt a real $50 bank note, the bird’s wings will move and change colour. You will also see numbers written backwards and a rolling colour effect on the patch in the top corner.

If you hold it to the light you should see the Australian Coat of Arms.

Since Australian money is printed on polymer, a type of plastic, a real bank note should go back to its original shape after being scrunched up.

Banknotes are also difficult to tear and have fine line patterns on each side that are multi-coloured.

Ink Chromatography

Complete the experiment below.