Forensics: Shoe Impressions

Lab Highlights
  • Foil Impressions: Students pressed their shoes into heavy-duty foil to capture clean, detailed impressions of their soles right in the classroom.
  • Dirt Casts: They also took realistic shoe print casts in the dirt, learning how real investigators preserve outdoor evidence.
  • Class vs. Individual Characteristics: Students analyzed various shoe prints to separate class characteristics (like brand, size, and pattern design) from unique individual characteristics (like wear marks, cuts, and specific rocks stuck in the tread).





  • We will take the cast out Monday and learn to clean it in order to analyze the print better.

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