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Evidence Packaging Guide

Run the Evidence Packaging Guide Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

The packaging material must match the evidence type. Using the wrong container is not a technicality — it can destroy the forensic value of the evidence or make it inadmissible. Wet blood sealed in plastic grows mold and the DNA degrades; loose fibers spill out of a bag; a powered-on phone gets wiped remotely; a knife slices through a paper sack and injures a handler.

This MicroSim turns those rules into a decision-practice tool. You are handed a realistic evidence item — a wet bloodstained shirt, loose carpet fibers, a used needle, a suspect's phone — and you must select the correct packaging from five options. The moment you choose, you get immediate feedback: whether your choice was correct, the forensic reason the right packaging protects the evidence, and the courtroom risk of getting it wrong. A Reference mode lets you browse every evidence category and its packaging rule at your own pace.

How to Use It

  1. Leave the Mode dropdown on Practice. Read the evidence case card at the top — it names the item, describes it, and tells you which evidence module it belongs to.
  2. Hover over any of the five packaging choices to see its name and a one-line description.
  3. Click the packaging you think is correct. The correct option is outlined in green; if your pick was wrong, it is outlined in red.
  4. Read the feedback panel at the bottom: the forensic reason for the correct packaging and the courtroom risk of the wrong choice.
  5. Press Next Item > for a new randomized evidence item. Your running Score appears in the control bar; press Reset Score to start fresh.
  6. Switch Mode to Reference to browse every evidence type from the dropdown with its correct packaging always highlighted.

What You Can Learn

  • Select the correct packaging material for wet and dried biological evidence, dry trace, sharps, firearms, biohazards, digital devices, and impression casts.
  • Explain why breathable paper protects biological evidence while airtight plastic destroys it (mold and DNA degradation within 24–48 hours).
  • Connect a packaging choice to its courtroom consequence — how the wrong container can make solid evidence unreliable or inadmissible.
  • Recognize that correct packaging is one human-controlled step where avoidable error can quietly ruin a case before any laboratory test is ever run.

You can embed this MicroSim on your own web page with this iframe:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/forensic-science/sims/evidence-packaging-guide/main.html"
        width="100%" height="602" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Audience: High-school forensic science (grades 9–12) Time: 15–20 minutes Bloom level: Apply (L3) — select the correct packaging material for a given evidence item.

Choose-and-justify (the core routine). For each case card, students first say out loud which packaging they would choose and why, then click to check. The spoken justification is what pushes this from "guess the answer" to applying the packaging rule. Have students keep a running tally and aim to explain every wrong answer before moving on.

Guided questions:

  • A detective seals a wet bloodstained shirt in a plastic bag for four days. Using the sim's feedback, explain in one sentence what happens to the DNA and why.
  • Two items in the sim use the rigid box / tube. Name them and explain why a rigid container — rather than paper or plastic — is the safe choice for each.
  • Why does a powered-on smartphone need an antistatic / Faraday bag rather than a paper envelope? What could an accomplice do otherwise?

Extension. Ask students to invent a new evidence item (e.g., a damp soil sample, a charred document, a wet swab of an unknown liquid) and argue for its correct packaging and the courtroom risk of the wrong one. Note honestly that real cases are sometimes ambiguous — an item can be both biological and sharp (a bloody needle), and investigators must weigh handler safety against evidence preservation.

References

Specification

This MicroSim was generated from a specification in Chapter 2: Crime Scene Investigation and Evidence Collection.

Design note: the specification described a left-column category list with a right-panel explanation and a separate animated "Druggist Fold Tutorial." Because the learning objective is at the Apply (L3) level — select the correct packaging — the interaction was implemented as an active decision-practice tool rather than a passive browse-and-read panel: the learner is handed a randomized evidence item and must choose before seeing any answer, then receives immediate correct/incorrect feedback with the forensic reason and the courtroom risk. The spec's browse view is preserved as a Reference mode, and the druggist fold is represented as one of the five packaging choices (used for the dry-trace items) rather than a standalone animation, keeping the focus on the selection decision.