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CSI: YES Prep Southwest

March 29, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Are YES Prep students getting an authetic college prep experience? The Answer is YES. Check out this guest blog post by Keith Desrosiers, PreCalculus teacher at YES Prep Southwest.

YES Prep Southwest Students watch presentation at Sam Houston University forensics lab PreCalculus students have spent the past eight months solving endless problem sets, proving trigonometric identities, analyzing graphs of functions, modeling real world phenomena using sinusoidal and exponential models, the list goes on and on. They have spent countless hours studying mathematics, preparing for success in AP Calculus and beyond, and constantly asking the question “Where is all this stuff used?” Although I am always looking for ways to incorporate these mathematical ideas into the real world through application problems, nothing beats the opportunity to get out of the classroom and see how actual scientists use these ideas in their day to day lives. With this in mind, I placed a call to the Forensic Science Department at Sam Houston State University to arrange a tour of their department, one of only eight in the country which has been certified to offer a degree in Forensic Science.

Forensic scientists (think CSA and Law and Order), use trigonometry to study blood splatters at a homicide scene to determine the direction a bullet was YES Prep southwest students attend presentation at Sam Houston University forensics lab fired from, they use properties of exponentials and logarithms to estimate the time of death given the current temperature of the body and the temperature of the surrounding environment, they use pattern recognition and sophisticated computers to analyze finger prints and then compare to the vast database of finger prints on file, and they analyze graphs to determine which drugs are in a person’s system.

While at Sam Houston State, thirty-three high school students from the Southwest Campus, along with three parent chaperones, toured the Forensic Science Department, met with graduate students, and even had a chance to simulate the effects of intoxication using “drunk glasses”. After two hours in the lab, we then toured the campus with current Bearkats, and then had dinner with Southeast alumni Paul Longoria (Class of 2007).

YES Prep southwest students attend presentation at Sam Houston forenics lab My students and I left SHSU with a much deeper appreciation for the mathematics that we study. Thank you SHSU! We will be back soon.