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Hydrogel Knowledge Helps Solve a Case
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Ms. Mithra K.*
Email: mithra.k90@gmail.com
It was a boring Saturday night, in the month of October, and a pindrop silence could be prevailed at the Sector 3 police station
in Rourkela, Odisha. The winter season had just started and it was the time when sleep was inevitable. Who would not want to sleep comfortably in a rajai (quilt) and experience warmth and comfort? But the two detectives Karan and Priya, at the police station, sipped hot tea and stared intensely at the board ahead of them. They were trying very hard to find a clue in the case that they had been pursuing hard for the last three weeks. There were continuous thefts happening in and around the city and the thieves were leaving no clue behind. They used to steal only electronic equipment and leave cash and jewellery untouched.
At exactly 1 a.m. they received a phone
call about another robbery in the area. But this time the thief was careless and left behind a clue. The two detectives quickly rushed to the spot and began questioning, Mr Sahoo. It so happened that Sahoo had surprised the thief who was stealing the computer from the living room. Afraid of being caught, the thief had left behind the laptop and run away. The detectives quickly bagged the laptop and headed to the police station. Once at the police station lab they were able to find a partial fingerprint on the surface of the laptop. But lifting the fingerprint was a difficult task as the laptop was old and the surface was not even. They had heard about gel lifters being used but were not sure about how to proceed. Suddenly, Karan remembered that a professor at nearby institute was working on hydrogels,
* Ms. Mithra K., PhD Scholar from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, is pursuing her research on “Diffusion Dynamics in Hydrogels”. Her popular science story entitled “Hydrogel Knowledge Helps Solve a Case” has been selected for AWSAR Award.