The workshop stated with students hypothesizing about the events that occurred at a fictional crime scene. The scene consisted of finding a dead body surrounded by a white powder, leaving the question of how the person died, and if the powder found near the victim had anything to do with it. Provided with only a few clues, a description of the crime scene and the powder as evidence, the students designed a model with Vensim to represent how the evidence could have factored into the series of events leading up to the crime. The questions students were faced with about the evidence were: Was it a poison? Could it be in the victim's bloodstream? If the substance is poison, could it be poisonous enough to kill someone of that size? After creating and examining the model, the students worked on a hands-on experiment to test the reactions to several visually similar powders when combined with iodine, vinegar and water to see which one has the same reaction as a small sample collected from the imaginary crime scene.