From San Diego, at a meeting of the American Chemical Society
Collecting fingerprints at a crime scene may look easy on television shows, but in real life, it’s often challenging. Fingerprints left on textiles, wood, leather, and surfaces with multicolored backgrounds are often difficult to discern. To catch these elusive prints, researchers at Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory have developed a method that visualizes fingerprints with X rays.
Analytical chemist Chris Worley and his colleagues use a process called micro-X-ray fluorescence to detect minute quantities of chlorine, potassium, and sodium—elements commonly found in sweat. Those elements are transferred to a surface from the ridges in a person’s fingers.