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 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.   Cornflour
2.   Baking Soda 
3.   Salt
4.   Sugar 
5.   Magnifying glass
6.   Iodine
7.   Vinegar

8.   Water

9.   Tea Spoon 

10. Pipette 

11. Black Paper
Steps

1.  Add in half of the sugar in to one part of the paper
2.  Then do that to all the other powders
3.   Put each powder into three groups
4.  Add in 4 drops of water into on of each powder group
5.   Then add in 4 drops of water into each powder group
6.   Then add in 4 drops of vinegar into each powder group
7.Then add in 4 drops of a Iodine into each powder group
8.  See what happen's!

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	Cube and white also Crystals	Cube and white also Crystals	Fluffy, White	Fluffy and cloudy
Tex ture	Larger Grainy	Grainy	Soft	Soft and Fluffy
Smell	Sweet	Salty	Like clay	Nothing
Iodine	Crystals  Brown sugar	Crystals  and Yellow	Like ear wax	Black and white hard
Water	Sugar water	Salt water	Fizzing and hard and wet	Oobleck
Vinegar	Wet sugar	wet salt	Fizzing	Oobleck

In this experiment I found out that if you add in vinegar to cornflour it makes Oobleck. Well kind of! I thought that it would only make Oobleck with cornflour and water but it can be made with vinegar as well. Anyway I found out that if you put Iodine with salt they look like crystal. Cool!  

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Making Sherbet

Once you have completed your blog and cleaned up all your equipment you can make sherbet.

Using the following recipe you can make sherbet.

Sherbet recipe

Recipe: 

1 tsp of powdered drink crystals (eg refresh)
1/4 tsp citric acid
1/2 tsp icing sugar
1/4 tsp -baking soda.
Put all ingredients into a zip lock bag, stir, and enjoy.

Materials:

1. 1 tablespoon 

2.  powdered drink crystals

3.  citric acid

4.  icing sugar

5.  baking soda
7. Zip lock bag

Steps

1. Get a zip lock bag
2. Add in 1 tablespoon of  powdered drink crystals into the zip lock bag.
3. Then add in 1/4 tablespoon citric acid. 
4.  After that add in 1/2 tablespoon icing sugar.
5.  Add in 1/4 tablespoon baking soda.
6. Then close the bag and shake it up.
7. When all shaken up it is ready to be eaten. 

Findings:

Sherbet
Taste	When in your mouth Fizzed up. Sweet and little sour.
Colour	Baby pink.

Conclusion:

The sherbet was awesome but maybe next time we could have different flavors and different recipe. The best thing about making sherbet is that we got to keep it at the end and we got to eat it all up. BYE!!