Human Hair Microscopy

Yes, you know your hair can make you look beautiful when it is well kempt. You know your hair can make you look ugly when it is not taken care of or when it grows in unwanted places. You know hair warms you up (that's why when its hot most people like to tie it up.)

But do you know that your hair can send you to jail?

"Not my hair," you say. My hair doesn't walk; it doesn't talk; it doesn't breath. How can it send me to jail?"

But guess what it can. Hair is one of the FBI's popular forms of evidence that a certain person was guilty of a certain crime. The process is called Human Hair Microscopy.

You see, when the FBI arrive at a crime scene, most often the guilty party has long since left. The FBI looks around for clues and give aways to who the guilty person is. They have many different methods, they can test for finger prints, find articles of clothing left behind, if there's any blood on the scene they can try testing that (although it's often the victims blood sometimes some of the guilty's blood also get spilled in the process.

And the FBI can test the hair. Hair is not unique enough to be used as definitive evidence that it was a certain person. But it can give some great clues and significantly limit the suspects.

When the FBI finds a piece of hair they take it to examine under their microscope, hence the name "human hair microscopy." But even before they look at it under the microscope they can see the color, and if it is curly or straight which certainly limits the number of suspects. They can also see the length. Under the microscope, the FBI can examine the hair more carefully and see how thick the hair is. This can often tell them what gender the crime was performed by. It also clues them into his/her ethnicity. People from different ethnicities tend to have different hair colors.

Many people find Human Hair Microscopy very interesting.