csi or law n order

[MarkL]

I kind of like CSI, but I've seen some really stupid things on it.

There was an episode about a guy who got electrocuted, and the CSI gang needed to determine if his blood was conductive. Unfortunately he had been cremated, but they had a pint of his blood (for some reason) that they could test. To test the blood for conductivity, Grissom inserted wires into the pint bag to form a circuit in series with a regular light bulb and plugged the circuit into the wall! The light bulb lit up, Grissom smiled, and I shook my head in disbelief.

In case it isn't obvious, you measure conductivity/resistance with an ohm-meter. God only knows what would happen if you ran 120 Volt AC current through a pint of blood, but I bet it wouldn't be pretty. Also, you wouldn't contaminate the entire pint when only a few ml would be needed for the test. Finally, blood is always a pretty good conductor to begin with.

Since that episode, my interest in the show has waned.