What is that White Powder - 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.  Black piece of Card paper
2.  Cornflour
3.  Magnifying glass
4.  Baking Soda
5.  Salt
6.   Sugar
7.  Vineguar

Steps

1.  Fold Card Paper into 4 squares.

2.  Each squared had to be named out of Cornflour, Salt, Sugar 

      and Baking Soda.

3.   The teachers had to add a teaspoon of each of the ingredients mentioned above onto the 4 squares
4.   Then we had to investigate which powder is the same as the mystery powder by adding three drops of Vinegar, Water and Iodine. 
5.   While we are pouring three drops into each square and observing we had to record our finding outs on the chart.
6.  After that, we had to get the mystery powder and add 3 drops of Vinegar, Water and Iodine and compare the results to our finding outs above and see which powder out of Baking soda, Salt, and Sugar is the same as the mystery powder. 

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	White	White	White	White
Texture	Absorbs it Clumps together	Once the drops have been added it Absorbs it	Once the drops have been added it fizzes up and makes small bubbles for a limited time then it goes dry again.	Once the drops have been added it stick together and it makes beads. It clumps together and made it harder.
Smell	It has a strong smell of Vinegar and a hint of sweetness	It only has a strong smell of Vinegar.	With our investigation it doesn't really have a smell.	With our investigation it doesn't really have a smell.
Iodine	Appearance: White Texture: Once the drops have been added it spreads out and it looks like soy sauce. Smell: Smells like nothing.	Appearance:White Texture:It clumps together and becomes hard. Smell: It has a strong smell of Salt	Appearance:White Texture: It clumps together and becomes hard.Smell: It doesn't have a smell.	Appearance: WhiteTexture:It soaks it up Smell: It had a very strong smell of Vinegar.
Water	Appearance: White Texture: Once the drops have been added it just soaks it up Smell: It doesn't have a smell.	Appearance: Once the drops have been added it clumps together. Smell: It has a strong smell of salt	Appearance: White Texture: Once the drops have been added it kind of fizzes but not really, and it becomes hard.Smell: Normal smell of Baking Soda	Appearance: White Texture: Once the drops have been added it clumps together and it becomes hard. Smell: Based on our investigation it doesn't have a smell.
Mystery Powder	Texture: VineguarIt fizzes when the drops were added	Texture: Water: It clumps together and it smells like salt and becomes hard.	Texture: Iodine:It clumps together and it becomes soft and it smell like Vinegar.

Write a paragraph about your findings.

For this experiment we had to investigate, observe and match the 4 powders and find out which powder is the same as the mystery powder.

In our experiment with our group and I, we found out that the mystery powder is Baking Soda. We think it's baking Soda because once the three drops of vinegar was added it fizzed up and made some small bubbles just like it did with the Vinegar and Baking Soda that we tested before (finding outs). 

Below are some photos of evidence for our investigation, it also shows a photo of our first Baking Soda test (black Card Paper) and how it matches the mystery Powder.

Today I learnt how to observe different powders and how to tell the differences in things, it is also known as Forensic Science. 

Forensic Science is when you are collecting information or evidence

to help solve a case or problem. Forensic Science is mostly used when

solving a criminal case. By doing this they run D.N.A test, Footprints, and fingerprints and a heap of other stuff related to Forensic Science.

I enjoyed doing this experiment and I learnt a lot of new fun stuff!