[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] We need you
[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] Come on!
When I need help, and I've got a question
there's a place I go for inspiration
Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation
What girls?
[Izzie] SciGirls!
Whoo!
[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] I need you!
[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] Come on!
You've gotta log on, post,
upload, pitch in! Yeah!
Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?
The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting,
[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] We need you!
[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S
[Izzie] SciGirls!!
What are we seeing again?
It's a "SciGirls" mystery about a mask that's been stolen.
Did you say mask? I hate masks!
Evil lurks behind masks,
ask any raccoon you meet.
Masks are scary.
O...kay,
well, I hope so, I love scary movies. Don't you?
Uh, yeah sure, who doesn't love...
Ahaaa! Turn on the lights!
For the love of Cheezy Poofs, turn on the lights!
I was just turning out the light so we could see better.
Oh wait a sec, Jake,
you're really totally scared of masks?
A little bit, just a little tiny bit deathly afraid of masks,
and scary movies, and scary mask movies?
Forget about it!
Boo!Aaaaah!!
[click!] This is gonna be fun!
[orchestra plays in minor tones]
[click]
[cicadas chirp]
Where are we right now?
There's like nothin' but trees out here though.
I know, we're so far out.
Emi, Kaelyn and I are on our way to a forensics camp.
My name is Christina and the thing I love about science
is that it's found everywhere around us.
What's in the envelope guys?
Let's open it.Let's check it out.
A letter!Okay, we have a letter.
"Dear SciGirls, welcome to your experience
at Camp Raven, a forensic camp.
A crime has been committed at camp, and it's up to you to solve it.
The letter said that we are going to help solve a crime
that has been committed, so we'll be able to meet
with some specialists in the field and solve it.
My name's Emi and my favorite thing about forensic science
is the whole mystery of it.
Emi, where are we going right now?
We're going to go to Camp Raven.Ooo!
And we're gonna solve a crime.Really?
Crime fighters, whoo!
Oh, I'm pumped, this is going to be fun.
You ready to get your detective on?
My name is Kaelyn and what I love about forensic science
is that looking at the small things,
you can figure out who committed the crime
and what happened at the crime scene.
We're going to solve this.
Lay down the law!
[Christina] We will be given more details upon our arrival,
so I'm just really excited to hear more about it,
'cause right now, we're kind of left out in the dark.
We'll be detectives! Whoo!
Watch for the arrows! They're clues
for the "Pick'M, Stick'M" game on the website.
[Emi] When I pulled up to the cabin, there was crime scene tape
around the perimeter of the cabin.
[Kaelyn] And I'm actually nervous and anxious to find out
what happened with the crime, and I'm really hoping
that everybody's okay, that nobody got hurt.
[SciGirls] Hi!
Hi there, I'm Lindsey.I'm Emi.
[Kaelyn] Lindsey Garfield is a lead crime scene investigator
and she's going to be helping us figure out this crime.
We're going to go into the cabin, we're going to process the scene,
we're going to go through how to collect evidence, document,
photograph, sketch, and we're going to do that
after we have our briefing.
When we start with a briefing, we start to learn about
what happened here and what we're going to do
to help solve the crime.
The briefing information is this:
the mask for this camp is missing.
This information's coming to me from the camp director, Maxine.
It was last seen by the groundskeeper, Jeb,
at : last night, and the arts and crafts director
opened the cabin back up at : this morning, and it's gone.
The case is open, the mask is missing.
The mask is called "The Queen of the Forest" mask,
created by Cornelia Raven, she's a famous artist,
and she built the mask in .
And I have a picture of it, it's kind of white with silver,
it's got some glitter on it, it has some diamonds
and gemstones on it.ThThat's pretty.
They use this mask every year at their masquerade ball.
The master of ceremonies at this masquerade ball
wears this mask, so this ball can't happen
until the mask is found.
[Kaelyn] The mask that was stolen was actually really important.
They use it every year for this masquerade ball.
It happens in the next few days, so if we don't find it,
it's going to be breaking tradition,
so it's urgent that we need to find it.
So I'm going to show you some photos
that the camp director gave to me today.
This is a photo of all of the people
that were on site during the time in question.
These are all of our suspects.
We have suspects and those suspects are the camp staff,
which include the cook, the camp director, some counselors,
the groundskeeper and the heir to the camp, Ray.
Anybody has the chance to come into this cabin,
so we need to do what we can
to find the evidence to recover the mask.
When we first got up to the door,
the first thing Lindsey did
was check the door to see if there was forced entry.
There's no chipped paint on the door,
there's no marks on the door.
Because there's no forced entry,
we're not going to fingerprint this door.
[Kaelyn] When we saw that there's no sign of a break-in,
we assumed immediately that the person that
committed this crime most likely had a key to the cabin.
Alright, let's go in and we'll start to do the walk-through
and process the scene, okay?Alright. Okay.
[Christina] The mood in the room, when we first walked in, was serious.
It was just really exciting to be doing something so different
from anything we've ever experienced.
[Lindsey] This is the scene of the crime.
[SciGirls] There's paint on the floor, and footprints, and there's glitter over here.
[Lindsey] The reason that we're looking at this cabin
for evidence is due to a scientific principle
called Locard's Exchange Principle.
It simply means that when things come in contact with each other,
they transfer part of each other onto the other.
Whenever you touch something, you always leave a trace behind,
and that thing leaves a trace on you.
We're going to walk around the room, take a very careful look.
There's a certain path we have to take as we walk around the room,
so we don't mess any of the evidence up.
You've got spilled paint you guys noticed before,
there's also shoe prints here.
[Christina] They must have knocked it over
as they were hurrying out of the room.ItIt looks that way.
And there's also a notebook that has a page ripped out.
[Lindsey] Yes, the page is ripped out of the notebook,
it's important to note how things are
in the original state you find them in.
So now we have two things missing from the cabin-- the note and the mask.
Lindsey shows us to collect
anything that might be relevant in the crime.
She said that anything that might have been disturbed
or like, shouldn't normally be there
is something we should collect.
[Lindsey] This is the case where the mask was kept.
And you're going to want to note
the door being open almost all the way,
[Emi] It looks like there's more glitter inside.
We did a walkthrough; Christina's job was taking pictures
of everything she saw and processing the crime.
My job was taking notes of everything I found.
Emi's job was to take measurements of the crime scene,
and make sure that we could make a floor plan.
After documenting the evidence that we saw, we started
collecting and numbering the evidence that we found.
The glitter on the floor in front of the door is item number one.
[Emi] We put up cards to note where all the evidence was.
Then we took pictures of each piece of evidence with its card.
[Lindsey] Collecting glitter, because it's small,
best thing to pick it up with.
Lindsey showed us different ways to collect evidence,
like a really unique and cool way that she taught us
was to collect glitter from the floor by using a sticky note
and sticking it actually on the glitter,
and then folding it over itself then packaging up the evidence.
I'm gonna have you guys place the rest of the tents
and we'll collect that evidence together.
[Christina] Number is the notebook paper.
Number would be the smaller footprints.
We collected the notebook on the desk.
We actually cut out the footprints and the paint
on the paper on the floor.
And we also collected samples of glitter.
There was some on the floor,
there was some in the front of the mask case on the table,
and actually some inside the mask case.
When we put our evidence into the paper bags,
we had to make sure that they were completely sealed
so nobody could tamper with them.
[Lindsey] This is the debriefing, okay?
This is something you do after every crime scene.
[Emi] We just kind of went over what we had seen
and talked about what we're going to do next.
You're going to be doing some of the testing on this evidence.
Alright! Alright, sounds good. Sounds good, let's go.
[Emi] Today we're going to my house
and we're making an evidence board
to have a visual on the suspects.
So we need our camp director, Maxine.
The staff was, is now narrowed down to instead of .
Since the door was left intact,
the perpetrator obviously used a key,
and we're going to mainly focus on those suspects.
Yeah, you will go right here.
Our suspects that we've eliminated down to now
are Jeb, our groundskeeper,
Ray, who is the great grandson of Miss Cornelia,
Luna, the arts and crafts director,
Maxine the camp director,
and Blanche, the aquatics director.
Number , the footprint on the floor.
On the left side of the board, we have the five suspects,
and then on top of the board, we have the evidence
that we collected at the scene.
[Emi] Lindsey dropped off a huge box of evidence, and inside the box
was shoes from suspects, handwriting samples,
and interviews from every one of them
saying where they had been that night.
Let's watch this, guys.
[Maxine] Where was I the night the mask was taken?
Well, I had invited some other camp directors
from camps in the adjoining area.
We sat around the campfire,
we, and we were there until the fire d*ed out.
Well, what did they do after the fire d*ed out though?
They were probably there late because they're adults, they can stay out pretty late.
[Jeb] Well, I was in the dining hall
playing a late night game of chess with the camp cook.
[Blanche] I spent all day outside in the sun in my canoe
and got a really bad case of heat exhaustion
and went to bed early around : p.m.
[Ray] I dropped by for a dinner meeting with the camp director.
I was off site by : p.m., I had a polo tournament
to attend at a colleague's estate.
[Luna] I was down at the dock stargazing
with the other counselors, and
then it got cloudy around : a.m. and we called it a night.
[Kaelyn] What did you guys notice that was like, fishy or sketchy?
We really can't exclude or like, throw anyone out yet,
because there's this huge timeframe there
from : p.m. to : a.m., and any of these people
could still have committed the crime.
After watching the alibi videos,
we looked at the handwriting sample
we found at the crime scene and we compared it to
the handwriting samples from the staff members who had keys.
[Christina] These handwritings seem the most similar to our notebook.
[Kaelyn] What I can conclude from the test is that
Blanche's, Maxine's, and Luna's handwriting
all look similar, but we can't
rule out the writer of the note could have been writing
in a different style of handwriting
than its actual handwriting.
The next thing we did after handwriting
was start analyzing the shoe prints and shoes.
Did you guys notice that there's little owls,
it looks like, in the shoe prints?
I did not. Oh yeah.
I did not see that, so maybe we should use both,
'cause you can see the owl prints better here.
Should we do that with the girls' shoes?
Yeah, sure.
Ah, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,
Look at the owls guys! Look at the owls!
[Christina] We were really excited
when the owl prints on Luna's shoes
looked very similar to the owls in the shoe prints.
The next shoe we evaluated was Maxine's.
They're the same shoes!
They're the same sandal size! Oh my gosh.
And this shoe has silver glitter on it. Silver glitter.
Careful, careful, careful, we need to preserve the evidence.
We were shocked at the discovery that she had the same sandals,
and the we actually found silver glitter on Maxine's shoes.
Same shoes again. Same shoe size.
The next shoe that we looked at was Blanche's
and her shoes were also
the same exact shoes as Maxine's and Luna's.
Let's open up Ray's shoes.
Whoa, these are huge! These are huge shoes.
Do you think this matches up with the footprints?
To me, I don't think this would work guys, and there's no owls.
Okay, we just have Jeb's shoes next.
Let's be careful.
Owl prints on the bottom guys? No.
Okay, I think that we can eliminate this.
So these are all going to the lab.
After we did the shoe and handwriting analysis,
we went to the evidence board
and we starting linking the suspects
to the evidence that we found at the crime scene.
The suspects that had the most check marks in their row
would be Maxine, Blanche, and Luna,
because they all had similar handwriting
to the handwriting on the notebook, and they also had
the tread that was in the paint on the bottom of their shoes.
We can't rule anyone out right now,
but we do have our suspicions on who the perpetrator is.
I think we can really fill this out once we get back from the lab with results.
We're at Hamline University and
we are going to go into the lab and meet Sarah.
Hi. Hi Sarah.Hi girls.
[Sarah] It looks like you brought a lot of evidence to examine.
Yeah, we got it all.
[Christina] Sarah isa forensic scientist
who analyzes trace evidence.
You girls want to get on lab coats, so we can
start doing some science?Yeah, that's great!
[Kaelyn] In the lab today we're going to be analyzing
ink, glitter and shoe prints.
[Christina] We found some silver glitter in the mask case,
so that would be our known glitter.
So the known would be like the glitter in the case,
we know that's from the mask.
Question would be the glitter from Maxine's shoe.
We are looking at the glitter sample from Maxine's shoe.
When we looked at the glitter under the scope,
she looked at things like shape and color.
I never thought that glitter had that much detail.
It was really unique and cool to find out that
oh, glitter isn't just glitter, it actually has
a lot of different characteristics to it.
It looks like the shape of a hexagon, guys.
The edges of the glitter looks like they're raised.
As we were looking at the glitter,
we noticed more things about it,
like how they had ridges and indents in it,
and how there seemed to be different layers there,
also how it wasn't completely smooth over the layered glitter.
It looked like there was pores in the glitter.
Let's put the question sample away
and let's get the known sample out,
and let's just see if we can make the same observations.
Cool.
This one looks very similar
to the glitter pieces from Maxine's shoe.
It also has that bent up shape to it.
It also does have the same sides.
Yes, the glitter samples that we analyzed, had a lot of similarities,
So based on your observation, what are you girls thinking
about the glitter from Maxine's shoe
and this known glitter from the mask?
[Kaelyn] I think they're very similar.
[Emi] Even have some of the manufacturing defects
in common with each other.
So do you think that the glitter from Maxine's shoe
could have come from the mask?
Definitely, yeah.
Based on the fact that
the glitter from Maxine's shoes had a lot of characteristics
that the glitter from the mask case had,
we determined that Maxine was in that room,
and she could possibly have stolen the mask.
Our next testing was going to be on the pens.
Sarah ran tests on the ink that we found from the notebook
at the scene of the crime, and our job was to actually run
the same test and see if there was any similarities there.
What we'll want to do is
just look at the chromatography results from the pens
and we'll compare it to the note.Okay.
[Kaelyn] The pens that we tested were pens from Blanche, Maxine, and Luna.
The reason that we tested these pens only is because
their handwriting is the most similar that we found on the notebook.
One dot for each pen, dots total.
[Kaelyn] We used a wick, and the pens that we collected
from the suspects, we did small dots of each sample of the pen,
and then we actually put the wick with the pen ink in water,
and we watched the colors separate,
and we compared it to the same test that Sarah had done
with ink from the crime scene.
On both Luna's and the note, they start off
like a bluish-purple color, and then it ends yellow.
It looked like Luna's pen wrote the note.
It doesn't mean that people didn't switch pens.YYeah.
After we conducted this test, we were able to conclude
that the ink from Luna's pen actually wrote the note.
Can you imagine Luna taking the mask?
[Emi] So Luna walked into the cabin, she goes
straight to the notebook, and starts writing down
the information she needs to maybe sell the mask.
[Jake] Not scary at all, not scared of masks, not scared.
Da-ha! There's a hand in my popcorn.
For the love of Cheezy Poofs, there's a hand!
It's yours...
The hand is yours, ha-ha, nothin' to be scared of here.
Really, because it is my hand,
[in deeper voice] but I can't control it.
It's a zombie hand.
It has a mind of its own,
and it must have popcorn!
Aaaaaah!
[laughs] You're so easy!
[Christina] She was the one to realize it was gone, so that's a good cover.
[Kaelyn] When we started working with shoe prints,
we started with each individual shoe print
and we coated it with an ink and then pressed down to make
an impression, then copied them onto a transparency sheet
so we could actually lay them over the prints
that we collected from the scene and really analyze them.
So let's try with
this impression, Maxine's shoe.
[Emi] It doesn't look like this one corresponds.
It looks like this one's moved over a little bit more.
[Sarah] What I'm seeing in this question impression
is a little bit of smearing.Smudge.
That could maybe make the shoe move a little bit.
Left when they were walking.
So let's overlay again, could that maybe account
for that slight difference that you're seeing in placement?
[Kaelyn] Definitely, if it went this way, then everything would align.
This one lines up pretty well.
Yeah, this one lines up better.
Especially because of the smudging.
[Emi] Because the paper was clear, you really could analyze
the differences and similarities.
[Christina] I don't think that Blanche's is a correct fit.
So we could eliminate Blanche's.Okay. Yeah.
[Emi] This is Luna's shoe, this one doesn't quite line up.
I don't think Luna's...I think Maxine's is the better,
That's just one more piece of
evidence is against Maxine. Yeah.
But I don't know at this point if we can really say Maxine took the mask.
No, I don't think so.Yeah, we can't say that yet.
We concluded that Maxine's shoe prints were the closest,
that were actually found at the crime scene.
I could almost kind of see Maxine doing it.
Sneaking into the cabin, writing the letter.
She probably was in a rush, so as she rips out the paper; the green paint spilled.
And stealing the mask and leaving.
She might be a little upset
because the heir to the camp itself
is Ray and not her
and she's probably the one who does most of the things.
[Christina] She's the one in charge; Ray just walks around,
he looks good, that's all he does while she's doing all the work.
Our final suspects at the end of the day
were actually Luna and Maxine.
[Sarah] You put a lot of the pieces of the puzzle together,
but we're still not sure who committed this crime.
So there's one last piece of evidence, the torn note.
You can never tear a piece of paper the same way twice,
so you if you can find the individual that has
this torn piece of paper and physically match it back,
you'll have your suspect.
If we do find that notebook paper,
I think that's going to be
the prime evidence that will lead us to the perpetrator.
Today is actually the day of the masquerade ball.
[Emi] It's really crunch time and we're nervous.
Girls are arriving all dressed up, decorations are going up,
everyone's getting ready for this ball
and we don't even know if we can find the mask.
[Kaelyn] Our first order of business is to find
the missing part of the paper from the notebook
that we found at the crime scene.
The camp gave us permission
to search the offices of Maxine and Luna.
This is Maxine's office.
Do you see anything suspicious?
[Kaelyn] We walk into Maxine's office and one of
the first things we notice is a list of things to do.
[gasps] What did you guys see?
I thought I saw a piece of paper, notebook paper.
[Kaelyn] Christina went and flipped through the pages, then
she noticed some writing in a different color page, 'cause it was
basically just all graph paper in that stack of paper.
Here guys.Oh my gosh, it's there!
Oh my gosh, it's there!Oh my gosh.
Let's get the notebook to compare it, guys.
Oh my gosh, this is crazy.It's here.
Okay....ripped out.
Look, this is exactly the same, and then it says August,
and leaves off at July, the dates.
And then the lines match up.
And the holes match up over here. That's crazy guys.
After that, we found a piece of paper in Maxine's laptop.
Play this video.Let's watch guys.
Congratulations! You found me out.
This is camp director Maxine, and yes,
I did take the Queen of the Forest mask.
She took it!I know!
And you'll find it in its box in my office.
So go ahead, get the mask,
go to the party, and have a great time!
It's in the box. It's in the box? In her office.
Oh my gosh, that is so pretty!
So beautiful, oh gosh!
I can't believe we found the mask. We found it! I know!
[Christina] Up to this point, all we had seen was a picture of the mask,
but opening up that box and seeing the mask,
it was a moment of pure bliss.
, , , SciGirls!
Maxine committed the crime and it feels great
to know who committed the crime.
Since Luna does work in the craft room, she could have left her pen there.
When Maxine was in there she was hurrying, she picked up
the first pen she saw and started writing the note.
That makes a lot of sense too.
It just kinda gave us a sense of accomplishment
and just really brought this whole experience together.
The ball's starting soon guys, let's get this mask to the ball.
[loud cheering]
[Emi] As soon as we walked in the door, everyone smiled
and stated cheering, they were so happy to get the mask back,
and carry on with the tradition.
It just made this whole experience complete.
Behold the Queen of the Forest!
[applause & cheers]
[Kaelyn] Working with of my great friends
has been a great experience.
It's one of my favorite things to do, hang out with them
and then forensics, which is like a great match together.
[Christine] I'm so proud that we found the mask
and that the tradition of Camp Raven can go on.
[Emi] From this experience, I've gotten to learn a whole lot more
about the forensic science field, and it was super great
getting to work with Kaelyn and Christina.
And I think it really brought us even closer together.
[all] ♪ We found the mask, mask, we found the mask, mask. ♪
[all cheer]
Got your clues? Head on over to the Web and play
"Pick'M, Stick'M" at pbskidsgo.org.
I knew it was Maxine the whole time.
See, told you there was nothin' to be scared of.
Me scared, what do you...
It's okay Izz, I knew you'd be scared,
so I pretended to be scared.
Aaaaah! It's a zombie rodent!
Don't eat me, don't eat me, please!
It's Fang.
I can see that now.
Gonna put ya down now.
Not yet.
02x10 - Super Sleuths
Watch/Buy Amazon
Each episode depicts the STEM-themed activities of a group of middle-school girls including engineering a mini-wind farm, creating a turtle habitat, designing an electronic dress, and more.
Each episode depicts the STEM-themed activities of a group of middle-school girls including engineering a mini-wind farm, creating a turtle habitat, designing an electronic dress, and more.