Although forensic science is regarded with a certain amount of fascination and admiration by the general public, to the practising forensic scientist it is often associated with painstaking and frustrating examinations.

This is particularly so in the most traditional area of forensic science, namely that of contact evidence where the identification and comparison of minute samples may provide an important clue for the investigator and assist in the conviction or exoneration of an accused person.

Contact evidence may include hairs and other fibres, paint samples, glass fragments, stains, soils and other deposits. Modern instrumentation such as infra-red spectrophotometry, gas chromatography, atomic absorption spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis now allows a relatively simple identification of the composition of these materials. However, these techniques are not necessarily directed towards the absolute determination of structure of materials and this is particularly so in the case of crystalline materials of forensic interest such as soil, mortar, brick dust and paint fillers. Although the techniques previously mentioned provide the basis of an elemental analysis this may not be of much assistance in a forensic approach where chemical structure is the basis of a scentific comparison.