The body of a middle aged man is discovered in the kitchen of a dwelling house.

Question

The body of a middle aged man is discovered in the kitchen of a dwelling house. He is identified by neighbours as the occupant of the house and was last seen alive 7 days prior to the discovery of the body by his girlfriend. Based on the principles of Newton’s Laws of Cooling, a forensic pathologist, who examined the body at the scene, informed the investigating police officers that the body had been dead for twelve hours and twenty minutes.

a) Can you identify a flaw in the presentation of this answer? Explain your answer. b) Knowledge of what factors might lead the forensic pathologist to modify his stated postmortem interval and in what way (i.e. increase or decrease) would the stated postmortem interval be modified? Briefly explain your answers. You should list and explain as many factors as you can think of.

Explanation / Answer

For some time after the death, the body will radiate heat into thec room, causing the body’s temperature to decrease. assuming that the victim’s temperature was normal 98.6F at the time of death. Forensic expertwill try to estimate this time from body’s current temperature and calculating how long it would have had to lose heat to reach this point.Newton’s Law of Cooling states that the rate of change of the temperature of an object is proportional to the dierence between its own temperature and the surrounding temperature, that is the temperature of its surroundings.Newton’s Law makes a statement about an instantaneous rate of change of the temperature. This verbal statement is translated into a dierential equation,which we need to solve. The solution to this equation will then be a functionthat tracks the complete record of the temperature over time. Newton’s Law would enable us to solve the time of death of a murdered person.

The major flaw in presenting the answer made by a forensic expert is that the room temperature is not known accurately at the tme of death.

The variables for such type of problems are-temperature of the body and time of the day.

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