August 9, 2005
The class began the day by studying handwriting analysis. They studied the different patterns in handwriting, including flow, style, and neatness. To test this they each wrote a the same phrase on a piece of paper and passed it around the room. Everyone took turns comparing other people's writing to his or her own. This gave them preparation for the next activity. That morning a ransom note had been found at Shodor. They were asked to use they're deductive skills to determine who wrote the note. They compared it to several handwriting samples from Shodor staff and interns. Many of them were able to match the handwriting of the original to one of the samples.
After break, Matt introduced the class to Stella, a piece of modeling software. He let them know that they were going to be building a model to simulate dead body decomposition. Including factors such as temperature, trauma, rainfall, humidity, clothing, and burial depth, the model was carefully designed. When they were finished the students could graph the results to see how fast a body would decay under certain conditions.
As a fun challenge, Matt told the class that whoever could find the right settings to make a body decompose the fastest would win a soda at snack tomorrow. Two groups tied for first place, Robert and CJ and Ahmad and Annissia.