This week marks the start of our elective postings. I have enrolled myself in an online course programme through Coursera on the topic, ‘Forensic Science’. In the span of five days, I was able to capture the big picture of what forensic science is all about. The recorded lecture videos provided for this week were more focused on the introduction with some of the few well known real life homicide cases in the early days of forensics. I have also completed the second topic of the week, ‘Chemical Analysis in Forensic Science’, which explains more in detail regarding the laboratory aspects of forensics. We were able to visualize the differences of each technique on how to analyze chemical evidence in helping to solve these cases.

What I found most interesting from this week’s activity was how forensic science also has their limitations. Although forensic science plays a big role in proving Actus Reus, a guilty action, with the help of physical evidence from the crime scene, it cannot determine Mens Rea, a guilty mind or intention and that is because Mens Rea is concerned with what is going on inside someone’s head and not in the physical world. Secondly, I would also like to highlight the importance of elemental analysis in discovering the actual occurrence of events instead of assuming possible scenarios of a crime of no witnesses. Science can help uncover the unseen. 

This week’s venture was really fun and interesting. What really made me super intrigued to get onto the next topic are the case examples explained by the professor. It is quite similar to watching crime shows on the television but knowing it actually happened in real life opens up a door to millions of questions in my mind. 

The elemental analysis topics were a bit heavy on the chemical theories. It would be a lot helpful if we were able to visit the laboratories to experience how these analyses are done. Fortunately, a lot of videos regarding these machines are also available on YouTube nowadays. 

Amusing

Interesting

I plan on completing the next two topics on Time of Death; Blood and DNA in Forensics. I will also be preparing for the upcoming quizzes by the end of next week. 

 

I have indulged myself in a programming course called CS50 by Harvard University which basically involves an introduction to computer programming. I have gone through week 0 and week 1’s lecture and problem sets. Basically submitting some assignments that were tasked to us. First assignment was to build a game via Scratch and the second was to build a program to detect the type of credit cards based solely on the credit card number and test its viability via C language. 

 

 Basic understanding of the concepts of programming and grasping the fundamentals. Some key features on the GITHUB submission system they introduced and of course the C language itself which is supposedly known as the predecessor for all computer languages. 

Intriguing, curious, good experience to try out something new. Having more fun than i thought i would.  The satisfaction you get when the code you developed after an entire day finally works is just remarkable. 

 

The assignments themselves proved to be quite the task, with the brief introduction they gave and the limited amount of knowledge they provided within the first 2 lectures, they tasked us to make our own code that would run as intended flawlessly. But through thick and thin, after quite a few typos, i completed the tasks and i was proud. 

 

Fun and interesting

 

Finish up on week 2 and week 3 lectures and assignments. Learn python which is within the syllabus. Finish the assignments tasked to us on week 2 and week 3.