Identifying the Dead - Week 3

Post date: 22-Nov-2016 19:33:38

Blunt vs sharp trauma experiment

We conducted an experiment to compare the effect of impact by blunt and sharp instruments.

Step through the pictures to see how it went.

Our equipment:

* tablet computer to display instructions as we go along;

* "playdough or plasticene" - I used short crust pastry (which will become the oustide of an apple pie in due course);

* a ruler.

Two "golf ball size" spheres of "dough".

(I wonder if we would have used a different type of ball if the course were not being run by a Scottish university!)

The balls after being hit by the ruler.

On the left, we have the result of a blunt instrument attack, using the flat side of the ruler. You can see that the edge of the ruler made a sharp indentation while the flat surface flattened a wide area on the top of the ball.

On the right we see the effect of hitting with the sharp edge of the ruler. There is a deep groove created, which is roughtly the width of the ruler's thickness.

Here are the results of striking the balls of dough with three different blunt instruments and 3 dfferent sharp ones.

The rolling pin and the banana both left smooth indentations that show the shape of the instriument's surface.

I was disappointed that the slit made by the bread knife was too narrow to be able to see any marks of the serrated edge at the bottom. Perhaps I should have pulled it apart to see inside properly.

The tea caddy left the most interesting wound. I was attempting to simulate the effect of an object falling from a height on to the victim. A large section of the ball has been flattened, leaving two walls of dough at the angle of the corner of the caddy. In addition, there is a deeper groove showing how the sharp edge of the caddy dug into the dough.

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