APPLICATION OF SPICES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF LATENT FINGERMARKS: AN EXPERIMENT IN CHEMISTRY TEACHING

The development of fingermarks is an important step in criminal cases. Latent fingermarks require applications of reagents to be developed before they can be visualized. Different techniques to enhance fingermarks’ visualization have been employed and the powder dusting is the most common among them. The use of food spices as latent fingermarks developers could be an alternative method of experiment in chemistry teaching, considering that they are low cost and accessible. In this work, an experimental methodology was developed and can be applied in undergraduate chemistry teaching for the extraction of components from food spices, their chromatographic analysis and application on the development of latent fingermarks.