Science/ Home chemistry

Today you will be a Forensic Chemist.

A bag of white powder has been confiscated by the airport customs.  You need to find out what white powder it is?

Aim: To learn about the makeup of different white powders.

There are  a number of different white powders in our everyday life. Some of these are harmful and others are not. Test the four white powders listed to see which one has been found at the airport.

Here are some examples of everyday kitchen white powders.

Flour, Cornflour, Sugar, Salt, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Icing Sugar, Tartaric Acid

Citric Acid, Gluten Free flour

You will be given a small amount of 4 white powders on your cardboard. On the black cardboard using a magnifying glass look at the powders.

Look at them under your magnifying glass and record what you see.

These are the four powders we will be using. Upload a photo of each powder.

1.  Cornflour

2.  Baking Soda

3.  Salt

4.  Sugar

Before you add the iodine, vinegar or water you will need to divide each powder into 3.

Materials

1.  Pipette

2.  Vinegar

3.  Water

Steps

1. Pour one teaspoon of baking soda.

2. Pour one teaspoon of salt.

3. Tip one teaspoon of corn flour.

4. Scoop one teaspoon of sugar.

5. Divide each pile into threes.

6. Pour 1 drop of vinegar on each four pile.

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance
Texture	It turned cristelized.	It turned cristelized.	Soaked it up.	There was a hard cylinder.
Smell	Horrible	Horrible	Strange	Normal
Iodine	Brown/blakesh	Brown/blakesh	Earwax	Very dark brown
Water	soaked it.	Soaked it.	Soaked it.	middle circled
Vinegar	Very effective	Very effective	Very effective	Not effective

Conclusion:

Overall i think the experiment was a good experiment. What I have learned from the experiment is that the mystery prouder was baking baking soda because all the other ingredients soaked but the baking sodas reaction was dry, the baking soda dried when we put vinegar on it.