White Powder

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. Iodine
4. Salt
5. Baking soda
6. Cornflour
7. Sugar

Steps

1.  Fold the cardboard into four.
2.  Put all the white powders on the cardboard
3.  Divide each powders into three
4.  Put three drops of Iodine, Water, and Vinegar to each powder
5.  Watch what happens 

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	Clear	White	White	White
Texture	Large	Medium	Small	Small
Smell	Sweet	Nothing	Nothing	Nothing
Iodine	Turned watery	Turned watery	Sticks to it	Rolled off
Water	Absorbed	Absorbed	Absorbed	Turned hard
Vinegar	Turned watery	Turned a bit watery	Bubbled up	Rolled off

Write a paragraph about your findings:
The Sugar Dissolved the Iodine which looked a bit nasty because it started to look like mold. We figured out the type of white powder the Mystery Powder was. It's BAKING SODA! We figured it out by comparing the reactions that we got from the white powders to the Mystery Powder.