What is the white powder?

Hurumanu - What is that white powder?

Today you will be a Forensic Chemist.

A bag of white powder has been confiscated by 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.  Paper

2. Magnifying glasses

3. Pen or finger

Steps

1.Divide your paper into four sections

2. Put the powders into the four different sections

3. Divide each powder into three sections

4. Then pour the three different chemicals

5. Record the reactions

Findings:

In our testing, we know for a fact that they all have different reactions.  

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	Changes into a different colour	DIfferent colours	Different Colour	Changed Colour
Texture	Thin liquid	Turned straight black	Turned into a yellow like colour	Stiff a solid
Smell	It smells really bad.	Smells like a recipe cake when you use mouldy ingredients	Smells so bad	No one likes the smell
Iodine	Turned really black	Turned black an absorbed the liquid	Made a yellow like colour and is absorbed the liquid.	Turned really stiff
Water	Absorbed (Nothing)	Absorbed (Nothing)	Floated on top of the powder.	Turned into a thick liquid
Vinegar	Create a tiny amount of bubbles	Absorbed (Nothing)	Did a huge amount of bubbles, it was a good reaction	It floated on top of the powder

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I would like to say that it has been fun recording my findings in our forensics experiment.  In the end, this has been great fun I would love to do this again.   I recommend this when you are at home.  There is a high chance of you having these ingredients but probably not the iodine. What do you think the white powder was?