What is that white powder?

Hurumanu - What is that white powder?

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 see different powders and liquids react in different ways / To find out what the white powder is. 

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. card board  

2.  vinegar

3.  water 

4.  iodine

5.  sugar

6.  baking  soda 

7. corn flour

8. salt

9. pipette 

Steps

1.  fold card board in four.

2. right dawn the four  names of the powder on each sides of the card board.

3.get a little bit of the salt, baking soda, corn flour and the sugar and add one each of the powders on to one of the sides of the card board. 
4. once you have add the powders then dived each powder in to three groups.

5.  After you get the vinegar or water or the iodine then add them to 6. one of the powders / so each powder gets each of the liquids.

7. Then you just watch and see what happens. 

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	white	white	white	white
Texture	large	medium	small	small
Smell	sweet	sea	lemony	none
Iodine	get darker and absorbs	gets litter and absorbs	hardens	hardens
Water	absorbs/ melts	melts	melts	absorbs
Vinegar	melts/ absorbs	absorbs	bubbles	sits and hardens

Write a paragraph about your findings.

all of the colour of the powders are white. The sugar had large grains, the salt had medium grains but you could hardly see the grains until you use the magnifier glass, the baking soda had small grains and then the corn flour had really small grains that you could hardly see them. The sugar smelled sweet, the salt smelled like  the sea, the baking soda smelled a little bite lemony and the corn flour smelled like nothing. 

Iodine:
when I add the iodine to the sugar it got darker and it looked like the colour of coke it also absorbs in to the sugar, then I add the iodine in'to the salt it stared to melt a little bit. 
The third thing I added was the iodine to the the baking soda and it started harden straight away, after I added the iodine in to the cornflour and it also just harden up straight away

Water:
I added the water to the sugar and it melted/absorbed, mixed water with the salt and it absorbed. Mixed the water with the baking soda and all it really did was melt, after I added the water in to the cornflour and it started to absorb.

vinegar:
Added the vinegar with the sugar and all it did was absorb and melt, mixed the vinegar and the salt a it started to absorb. Then I added the baking soda and the vinegar and the one probably had the best reaction to my because it started to bubble up. last but not lest I added the vinegar to the cornflour and it started to harden.

Mystery powder?
At the end we had to find out what the Mystery powder was the three powders it could be was cornflour, baking soda but I don't know what the last powder was. Later after we got the powder we had to divide it into to three, and then we did the same thing as we did with the other powders. At the end the Mystery powder was drum roll please............... baking we new it was baking soda because when we added the vinegar it started to make bubbles.