Forensic science is often shortened to just forensics. But there are several kinds of forensics as it pertains to criminal investigations. The most popular kind is physical forensics which is the application of a many different sciences to answer questions of interest to the legal system. This may be in relation to a criminal or civil investigation. At its core, forensics is about an accepted scholarly or scientific methodology to finding, collecting, storing and presenting facts about an event, an artifact, or some other physical presence such as a corpse.

There are many core differences between computer forensics and physical forensics. At the highest level, physical forensic sciences focus on identification and individualization. Both of these processes are used to compare an item from a crime scene with other substances to determine the substance of the item. For instance, is the red stuff blood or juice; human blood or animal blood. Computer forensics on the other hand focuses on finding the digital evidence and analyzing it.