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60 free Forensic Science trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This forensic science trivia quiz runs from the first recorded use of insects to solve a murder in 13th-century China to modern DNA databases. It covers the history (Song Ci's sickle case, the Marsh test for arsenic, Bertillon's body measurements, the first fingerprint bureau in Argentina), the science (why luminol glows, what a latent print is, which repeats DNA profiling actually reads) and the famous cases and people, including Colin Pitchfork, Frances Glessner Lee's dollhouse crime scenes and the Body Farm in Tennessee. The easy questions are ones any true-crime fan will know: what luminol reacts with, who is called the Sherlock Holmes of Lyon, what a polygraph measures. The hard ones dig into dates, names and numbers, such as how many local men gave blood in the first DNA manhunt and which techniques the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report criticised. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on forensic science, fingerprints, DNA profiling and the individual pioneers and cases, and each question links to its source. Good for students, pub quiz writers and anyone who watches too much CSI. Try our Sherlock Holmes and Serial Killers quizzes next.
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Q 01The word "forensic" comes from a Latin word meaning "of" what?
The forum
Roman trials and hearings were held in the forum, which is also why "forensics" can mean public debate.
Q 02In what year was Xi Yuan Lu, the first written account of forensic medicine, written?
1248
Author Song Ci served as a judge in the Song dynasty's high courts and personally examined crime scenes.
Q 03In Song Ci's famous case, every villager laid out his blade. What gave the killer away?
Flies gathered on his sickle
The investigator had already worked out the weapon type by testing blades on an animal carcass.
Q 04What did suspects in ancient India have to spit out as a crude lie-detection test?
Dried rice
The idea was that a nervous liar produces less saliva, so more of the grains would stick in the mouth.
Q 05John Toms was convicted of murder in 1784 after a pistol wad matched what item in his pocket?
A torn newspaper
It is one of the earliest recorded uses of physical matching evidence in an English trial.
Q 06Which Swedish chemist devised a method for detecting arsenic in corpses in 1773?
Carl Wilhelm Scheele
German chemist Valentin Ross extended the work in 1806 to detect the poison in a victim's stomach wall.
Q 07James Marsh's famous arsenic test, first described in 1836, produced the metal as what kind of deposit?
A silvery-black film
It could detect as little as one-fiftieth of a milligram, after an earlier test of his had crumbled in front of a jury.
Q 08Who is regarded as the father of modern toxicology?
Mathieu Orfila
Born in Minorca, he became royal physician to Louis XVIII and later dean of the Paris faculty of medicine.
Q 09Whose 1835 bullet comparison at Scotland Yard is a landmark of forensic ballistics?
Henry Goddard
Modern examiners compare the marks a barrel and firing pin leave on bullets and casings.
Q 10Alphonse Bertillon's identification system was based on what?
Body measurements
His system was overtaken by fingerprinting, but his mug shot and standardised crime-scene photography survive.
Q 11Bertillon's flawed handwriting evidence helped wrongly convict which famous defendant?
Alfred Dreyfus
He standardised the mug shot in 1888, notably with his file on anarchists.
Q 12Sir William Herschel began using thumbprints on documents in 1858 while working where?
The Indian Civil Service
He later registered pensioners' prints so relatives could not keep collecting after a death.
Q 13Henry Faulds, who published the first paper on fingerprint identification in 1880, was a surgeon in which city?
Tokyo
His letter to Charles Darwin was passed on to Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who spent ten years on the subject.
Q 21Paul Uhlenhuth's 1901 precipitin test allowed investigators to distinguish what?
Human from animal blood
It relied on the discovery that each species' blood carries characteristic proteins.
Q 22Luminol reveals traces of blood by reacting with what?
The iron in hemoglobin
The glow lasts only about 30 seconds and its brightness does not indicate how much blood is present.
Q 23What colour does luminol glow when it reacts at a crime scene?
Blue
The reaction is chemiluminescence, so it must be viewed in a darkened room.
Q 14Francis Galton estimated the chance of two people sharing the same fingerprints at about one in how many?
64 billion
He set out the statistics in his book Finger Prints and pushed for police use.
Q 15The world's first fingerprint bureau was set up in 1892 in which country?
Argentina
Its founder Juan Vucetich helped solve the Francisca Rojas case that same year via a bloody thumb mark on a door.
Q 16The Henry Classification System for fingerprints was actually co-devised by two experts in which city?
Calcutta
Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose did the primary work; the system was named for their supervisor Edward Henry.
Q 17Fingerprints that are invisible to the naked eye and need chemical or powder development are called what?
Latent prints
Prints pressed into soft soap, cement or plaster are called plastic prints.
Q 18Which reagent used to develop fingerprints works by reacting with amino acids in sweat?
Ninhydrin
Vacuum metal deposition with gold and zinc can detect fat layers just one molecule thick.
Q 19Do identical twins have identical fingerprints?
No, their prints differ
Papillary ridge patterns are unique to each individual and do not change over time.
Q 20What did researchers nickname adermatoglyphia, the condition of having no fingerprints?
Immigration delay disease
A 2011 study tied it to improper expression of the protein SMARCAD1.
Q 24Whose 1893 Handbook for Coroners is generally regarded as the birth of criminalistics?
Hans Gross
He went on to found the Institute of Criminalistics at the University of Graz in 1912.
Q 25The world's first school of forensic science, founded in 1909, is at which university?
Lausanne
Archibald Reiss founded the Institut de police scientifique there.
Q 26Edmond Locard is remembered for the principle that every contact leaves what?
A trace
He set up what may have been the first crime lab in 1910 in space lent by the Lyon police.
Q 27Locard's first crime laboratory in Lyon began in 1910 with two assistants and what premises?
Two attic rooms
He had to persuade the Lyon police department to give him the space.
Q 28The Bertillon System identified people by measuring how many parts of the body?
20
In 1884 alone, over 240 repeat offenders were caught with it.
Q 29Frances Glessner Lee's Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are what?
Dollhouse crime scene dioramas
Eighteen of the twenty are still used to train homicide investigators.
Q 30In 1943 Frances Glessner Lee became the first US woman appointed to what New Hampshire post?
State police captain
Her wealth came from International Harvester, and Erle Stanley Gardner dedicated novels to her.