THE PROCESS PART 2

4. What methods are commonly used to find the time of death?
To estimate the time of death forensic scientists commonly use the following 2 methods:

1. The rate method: Which consist in measure the changes of the corpes produced by a process which takes place at a known rate that was either initiated or stopped by the event under investigation. (Rigor mortis, body temperature, body putrefaction)

2. The concurrence method: Is a comparison between the occurrence event which took place at known times and the time of occurrence of the event under investigation. (digestion)

5. What factors are considered in Algor Mortis?

*There is consider the body temperature estimations.
*The Intra-abdominal temperature or by rectum.
*The environmental temperature.
*Where the body is laid, if is a cold surface and also influence if the cloth the body wears is wet.

6. How does the environment affect the time of death?

1. The size of the body: It depends on the mass of the body, if it is a small body it will lose heat more quickly than a bigger body.
2. Clothing and Covering: These slow down the cooling of the body, and when naked is faster.
3. Movement and humidity of the air: The movement of the air takes away the heat of the body, and accelerates its cooling. In humid air the cooling is quicker because moist air is better conductor of heat.
4. Immersion in water: The body cools faster in water than in air because water is a better heat conductor.

7. What can you tell about the different methods of temperature reading of the body? Do they make a difference in the results?

In a kind of way they are the same, the Algor Mortis is the one that convinced me more because it consider all the factors that can determine the time of death of a person. I think that all the factors are different ways to get to the same answer, some of them seems more complex than others and by the way some of them must be more exact than others, but at the end they’re all supposed to give approximately the same result.