Watching "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" never will be the same for one group of Athens-area middle school students.

The 18 youngsters spent the week learning some of the fundamentals of crime scene investigation at a day camp at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education.

This is the second year the University of Georgia has run the camp, which focuses not just on crime scenes but the science (and sometimes, the lack of science) that underlie police forensic techniques such as fingerprinting, hair and fiber analysis.

Campers even studied blood spatters and maggots - estimating how long a body has been dead by measuring how big the maggots feeding on it have grown.

Just like last year, the camp was a big hit with the students, even though most said they had rarely or never watched any of the CSI TV shows.

"I like all the hands-on things you do, like fingerprinting. That was really fun," said 12-year-old Rara Williams of Athens, as she carefully recorded the dimensions and descriptions left in a piece of modeling clay she'd imprinted with screwdrivers, hammers and other implements.

"This might be the only evidence you see at a crime scene," said instructor Rachel Luther, explaining how investigators might use impressions to investigate a crime.

Like co-instructor Debbie Mitchell, Luther is not actually a forensic investigator herself, but a UGA doctoral student in science education. Mitchell and Luther have learned crime scene investigation from a pretty good source, though.

In both the summer camp and in graduate school, their supervisor is science and math education professor Michael Mueller, who got forensic training when he was in the U.S. Coast Guard.

After wielding tools, the campers made and studied other kinds of impressions in one camp session.

Friends Abigail Snyder and Elie Campbell compared the teeth marks they'd made by biting repeatedly into a Styrofoam plate.

"You have a good bite," observed Abigail, 11.

One fun part of the camp was simply watching some of the instructional videos they'd seen, she said.

"I liked seeing all the clips, I guess - all the crime scenes," Abigail said. She recalled especially a couple of scenes where someone was dead, and another clip of a bank robbery.

Best of all, the camp ended Friday with a chance for the students to apply their new skills to figure out what happened at some crime scenes arranged by the instructiors.

"I like seeing the crime scenes and solving some of the mysteries," Abigail said.

Like most of the campers, Abigail and Elie took the camp just because they thought it would be fun.

James Hall of Lilburn may be getting a head start on a future career, though.

"I want to be a crime scene investigator when I grow up," he explained.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, July 31, 2010