Recently Colonel Virts visited our school. Colonel Virts is an astronaut who wrote many books about leaving the planet. During his time in space, he took more than 300,000 photos. More than any other space mission. A lot of the photos were used in the movies One More Orbit and A Beautiful Planet. We loved having him talk at our school and I encourage you to go check him out at https://www.terryvirts.com/

About a week ago, my L.A. class started a short project. We took our fingerprints and identified them. To do this, we colored on our fingers with pencil until our fingers were black. Then, we stuck tape to our fingers and peeled the tape of. Then, the fingerprint was on the tape! Then, we stuck it on the paper and it was done!We are doing this because we are reading The Westing Game and it is a mystery.

Here are 8 facts about fingerprints.

1. Koalas have them too!

2. Identical twins have different fingerprints.

3. Some people are born without fingerprints.

4. British police once ordered an entire town to submit their fingerprints.

5. Ancient fingerprints have been preserved for thousands of years.

6. Removing your fingerprint is very difficult.

7. The scientific name for fingerprints is dermatoglyph

8. There are 3 different types of fingerprint patterns.