Science Project: The Most Common Types of Fingerprints
The uniqueness of fingerprints has been used for several decades as an identification tool. For example, immigration officials sometimes use fingerprints to identify individuals wishing to enter the country. Fingerprints have also been extensively used in courtrooms for conviction and by investigatory agencies to identify crime suspects. There are essentially three main types of fingerprint patterns: loops, whorls and arches. Though some other patterns have also been observed, these are the most common patterns.
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Things Needed for the Project
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Assemble things you would need for the project: a washable ink pad, A4 size matte white paper sheets, a document scanner and a computer with word processing software.
Subjects
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Ask friends, relatives, classmates and teachers if they would like to participate as subjects in this project. Let them know that they will have to give you their fingerprints but that you will keep them anonymous. That is, you will not mark fingerprints with their names. Also let them know that the ink you will use is washable. You should have at least 20 subjects ready to participate.
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Preparation
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Divide an A4 paper sheet into four horizontal sections with a pencil and a ruler. Repeat this process such that you have the number of sheets equal to the number of individuals divided by four. For example, if you have 20 subjects, prepare five sheets.
Fingerprints
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Ask the first subject to press his forefinger on the ink pad and then immediately press it gently against the first section of one of the paper sheets you prepared earlier. If the fingerprint did not come out right, repeat the process. Advise your subject to immediately wash his hand with soap and water. Go through this procedure with all of the subjects with the fingerprint of each subject on a separate section of the paper sheet.
Scanning
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Connect the scanner with the computer using the USB cable and put the first sheet of paper with fingerprints upside down on the scanner. Put the scanner lid on and press the scan start button. The scanned document will appear on the computer screen as soon as the scanner finishes scanning. Save this document on the computer's hard disk. Repeat this process for all sheets with fingerprints.
Analysis Preparation
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Take a blank sheet of paper and create a table with three columns and three rows. Write "loops," "whorls" and "arches" in the three columns of the first row.
Analysis
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Open up the first scanned document in your computer and enlarge it by 200 percent so that the fingerprints become clearly visible. Determine which of the three patterns the fingerprints belong to. Refer to the link provided as a reference below to see how to identify the three common types of fingerprints. Essentially, loop types make loops of parallel lines. Whorls look like closed circles or wavy lines. An arch-type fingerprint has a pattern that looks like an arch. Make a tally mark under the respective pattern type in the table you created earlier. Repeat this process for all fingerprints in all scanned sheets. After you have gone through all of the scanned sheets, count the number of tally marks in each column and write the total in the row underneath. Now you have identified the most common types of fingerprints.
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References
- Photo Credit Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
