Taylor Morrison

Tendfield 3rd Period

Who Dunnit?

Noah Body was found dead at 9:45 pm last night. Using the information gathered, I can
confidently accuse the murderer as Mr. Body’s butler. His butler violently killed him around
5:07 pm last night. From the information given, I know, for a fact, that Mr. Body was in
perfectly good health, had a body temperature of 87.1 degrees at 10:07 pm, an hour later at 11:07
pm had a body temperature of 85.6 degrees, and the thermostat in his room had been set to 75
degrees for several days before and after his death.
Using the equation, A=A₀ ekt , I was able to find the exact time that Mr. Body could be
declared dead. In the equation, “A” represents the number you have (temperature), “A₀” is the
initial amount (temperature), “K” is the rate of change (how Mr. Body’s body temperature is
changing), and “t” is the time passed. With the numbers that were given in the investigation, I
was able to come up with the equation 85.6 = 12.1ek(1) + 75 . I received these numbers through
the equation given, and through the knowledge of Newton’s law of cooling. “85.6” represents
“A”, in the original equation, and is the most recent temperature of his body. To get “12.1” to
represent “A₀”, from the original equation, I subtracted the initial temperature of his body (87.1
degrees) by the surrounding temperature in the room (75 degrees). Subtracting these numbers
gives me the y-intercept of 87.1 degrees. To receive “t”, I used one hour because the difference
between 10:07 pm and 11:07 pm is one hour. In this new equation we are solving for “k”, to find
the rate that Mr. Body’s body temperature is changing. After solving, I found that “k” is
approximately -.1324.
After finding “k”, the next step I took was to see how long Mr. Body has been dead by
using the equation, 87.1 = 23.6e−.1324t + 75 . In this new equation, “A” is 87.1, the temperature
taken when Mr. Body was found. 23.6 represents “A₀” the difference between Mr. Body’s initial
body temperature and the surrounding room temperature. This gave me a new y-intercept equal
to 98.6 degrees. The next step was to plug in the value of “k”, found in the previous equation
(-.1324). Finally, solving for “t”, the amount of time dead, I find out that the time Mr. Body dies
was around 5 hours and four minutes before the time his first temperature was taken (10:07pm).
This tells me, the investigator, that Mr. Noah Body, a friend, a husband, and a father, was
killed at 5:07 pm. The Butler is the convicted murderer because he was the only person at the
time who was in the house, and had time to follow through with his plan.
X-axis: Time Passed
Y-axis: Mr. Body’s Body Temperature