She Blinded Me with Science- Fun with Luminol

We attend a local co-op once a week. Our 12-year-old daughter recently participated in a science fair. She has taken an interest in forensic science due to her intense passion for all things Sherlock Holmes. She chose to research and demonstrate how luminol is used to detect latent blood stains at crime scenes.

   She did some research on how luminol works via internet articles. We were unable to find any library resources that contained any applicable information on this chemical. We were able to obtain the product from Amazon, along with its necessary component- deionized water. But where and how shall we derive actual human blood?

   An ideal situation occurred later that week- our 6-year-old tends to get intense nose bleeds and she did get one on a particular evening. Thanks to the forensics kit the 12-year-old was gifted with, we had vials to collect the blood sample. Dad thought to keep it hydrated, so we added some water and kept the sample in our fridge, behind our sour dough starter, as ghastly as that sounds. Hey, it’s science, right?

   We were able to get in touch with a crime scene investigator with the local metro lab and our daughter asked him many questions about luminol and how it works and if our local crime lab in fact does use it. Mr. Christian Liewer was such a brilliant, kind wealth of knowledge, and answered all our questions and said we could contact him with future questions. He had just testified in court the previous day about how he used a luminol derivative to assist in a crime scene. We viewed that testimony while our daughter took notes. Shout out to you, Mr. Christian Liewer!

   The experiments were then conducted by using carpet pieces. our collected specimen and luminol. It was very cool to see how this product did indeed detect the blood, even on our sample that had been cleaned. Just for fun, we sprayed luminol on the bathroom sink where the 6-year-old had had the nosebleed- days before, which had been cleaned several times since with various chemicals. The luminol DID indeed pick up the trickle of blood. AMAZING stuff! We played around with how luminol reacts to bleach as well, since luminol will pick up any oxidizing element.

   She put together a display and presented it to the class. The science fair itself will be next week, and all projects will be on display.

Here are some great pics of this most educating experiment:

 

Reaction to bleach

Display

Initial Luminol Reaction

We took a couple of very short and very unprofessional videos as well which can be found here:

Luminol reaction:

Bleach and Luminol: