The meeting this month was held at The Malvern Hills Science Park, as usual.
This month we had a presentation by "Roar Forensics" www.roarforensics.com
Dr Simon Elliott (Consultant Forensic Toxicologist) enlightened us on their work here in Malvern, John Seviour (Co Director) from "Roar Particles" at Sedgefield presented us with new and innovative applications.
Simon told us about the work that they do, which gave us an insight into what happens when the police send samples off to be tested. It was quite interesting to know that there is a proper forensics lab, here in Malvern.
John ( the one with the beard ) is lucky to be working at the cutting edge of the industry. He has been playing with a machine which can detect drugs and explosives from a finger print! Some special dust ( made with nano-technology ) is dusted onto the print. Then some sticky tape is put on it and then unstuck and sent to the machine. The machine makes a vacuum and then burns the finger print with a laser, which ionises particles of the finger print. Big electro-magnets fling the particles up a tube. Different mocules take longer to fly up the tube, so looking at the finishing times of the particle flinging race, you can make a guess at what kind of molecules there are. You can then selectively trap out only the molecules you are interested in, with a well timed gate ( the times are only nano seconds, I think ), and divert them to a more comprehensive test in another tube. This could be used to tell whether someone is an old, drug-taking woman, or not.
Charles Penny was there, in case we needed a spare projector.
We decided that future meetings will be on the first Friday of the month
Simon told us about the work that they do, which gave us an insight into what happens when the police send samples off to be tested. It was quite interesting to know that there is a proper forensics lab, here in Malvern.
John ( the one with the beard ) is lucky to be working at the cutting edge of the industry. He has been playing with a machine which can detect drugs and explosives from a finger print! Some special dust ( made with nano-technology ) is dusted onto the print. Then some sticky tape is put on it and then unstuck and sent to the machine. The machine makes a vacuum and then burns the finger print with a laser, which ionises particles of the finger print. Big electro-magnets fling the particles up a tube. Different mocules take longer to fly up the tube, so looking at the finishing times of the particle flinging race, you can make a guess at what kind of molecules there are. You can then selectively trap out only the molecules you are interested in, with a well timed gate ( the times are only nano seconds, I think ), and divert them to a more comprehensive test in another tube. This could be used to tell whether someone is an old, drug-taking woman, or not.
Charles Penny was there, in case we needed a spare projector.
We decided that future meetings will be on the first Friday of the month
