Participants in Cole Library’s Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) workshop Wednesday, June 28, were able to investigate the differences in their fingerprints.
Cole Library director Grace Rowray outlined the difference between patent and latent fingerprints. Patent are the ones we can see ourselves on our fingers by staring at them. They’re always visible to our eyes and we can identify the whirls, loops and arches.
Latent fingerprints are the areas that can get left behind when we touch any surface.
“They’re what we know as almost invisible fingerprints that people can find by using dust and other methods to retrieve them,” Rowray said.
Attendees then got to experiment with a way to collect fingerprints – transferring graphite on their fingers to pieces of invisible tape to get a latent fingerprint for both hands.
Attendees had the opportunity to investigate their fingerprints with magnifying glasses to identify the arches, loops and whirls, and compare how dissimilar their fingerprints were to their siblings and other attendees.
Cole Library’s STEM activities continue on Wednesdays through July. Pre-registration for each session is required by contacting the library.
Amelia gets amazed by a detail on her finger after covering it in graphite at the Cole STEM event as part of the summer reading program.