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.  Salt 
2.  Sugar
3.  Baking Soda
4.  Corn Flour
5.  Black paper
6.   1/2 A teaspoon
7.  Magnifying glass

Steps

1. Get your piece of black paper and mark out four boxes.
2. Place your powders on the paper, in the boxes.
3.  Look at the powders, feel the powders and smell the powders and record the results.
4.  Split each powder into three and put four drops of Iodine, water and vinegar and record the results.

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	Like salt	Crystal looking	Flour looking	cloud like
Texture	Softer than salt	Hard like rock	Fluffy like clouds	Super rubbery
Smell	Sweet	Like nothing	Like poison	Gross
Iodine	Spread a little	Spread a lot	Turned tiny	Turned purple in some parts
Water	Left	Left	Left	Left
Vinegar	Turned wet	Turned wet	Fizzed up a lot	Fizzed a little

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.  Teaspoon's

2.  Powdered Drink Crystals

3.  Citric Acid

4.  Icing Sugar

5.  Baking Soda
6. Zip Lock Bag
7. Spoon

Steps

1. Put all of your ingredients in your zip lock bag
2.  Stir your ingredients with a spoon 
3.   Put in your drink crystals
4.  Stir the mixture again
5.  After that enjoy!

Findings:

Sherbet	Disgusting
Taste	Sour and salty
Colour	White

Conclusion

I didn't like the sherbert because I had to leave class early and that's when they put the drink crystals in so mine tasted like rotten cheese.