The instructor, Rachel, started the day by reviewing all evidence with the students, such as blood found at the crime scene, fingerprints, and other substances found. One substance discussed was a white powder that had been left at the scene of the crime, and the possibility arose that the powder was a form of poison. Rachel used this opportunity to get the students thinking about how poison affects the body and how the concentration of poison in the blood stream could be modeled. The group drew up a rough draft of how the amount of poison ingested, the absorption rates of the poison into the blood stream, and the rate at which the body would naturally get rid of the poison could be linked together to show the amount of poison in the blood stream. Then the class turned to their computers and used a program called VensimPLE to finish the model. When run, Vensim created a graph showing the concentration of the poison in milligrams per liter over forty-eight hours.
When they were done with building their Vensim model, the students were handed off to Nicole, who gave them a lesson on testing substances. During the lesson, the students learned to make observations on the properties of a substance, such as texture, appearance, and its reaction to chemicals like water, vinegar, and iodine. They will finish the last part of the lesson tomorrow to hopefully catch who is responsible for the crime by testing the powder that was left at the crime scene!