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 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.  Iodine 
2.  vinegar
3.  water
4.  pipette
5.  baking soda 
6.   salt
7. sugar
8.corn flour

Steps

1 fold cardboard into four unfold it
2. name each box  salt baking soda sugar and cornflour 
3. separate the white powders into 3s 
4. add three drops of iodine and water and vinegar into the white powders 
5. 
6. 

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance
Texture	crystals	small	tiny	chunky
Smell	nothing	nothing	nothing	nothing
Iodine	hardens	hardens	hardens	hardens
Water	wet	hardens	hardens	hardens
Vinegar	wet	hardens	fizzes harden	hardens

Conclusion:

We found out how the white powder would react.

the sugar texture was like crystals, it smells like nothing when it gets in contact with the iodine it hardens. when it also touches water and vinegar it just gets wet.

For the salt, it is the same thing as the sugar but the texture is small.

The baking soda texture is tiny and it smells like nothing it hardens when it gets in contact with the iodine, water and it fizzes and hardens when it gets in contact with the vinegar.

For the cornflour, it is the same thing as the salt but the texture is chunky.