Forensic Science- 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 whioch 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.  Card/Paper  
2.  Pipette
3. Water 
4.  Vinagar
5.  Baking Soda
6.   Cornflour
7. Sugar
8. Salt
9. Iodine
Steps

1. Separate each item into 3
2. Add 3 drops of Iodine to 1 part of each ingredient.
3. Put 3 drops of vinegar into 1 part of each ingredient. 
5.  Add 3 drops of water into 1 part of each ingredient.
6.  Watch each reaction and record.

Findings:

We found out that liquid in cornflour makes it go hard we also found out that vinegar makes baking soda explode like a volcano. 

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	Grainy and thin	fine and grainy	light and fluffy	cloud like
Texture	hard and little	very little and hard	soft like velvet	soft and fluffy
Smell	sweet	soy sauce	doesn't have one	nothing
Iodine	expands and looks like dark chocolate	looks like caramel and doesn't expand very much	absorbed the iodine.	sat in a bubble and sunk to the bottom
Water	goes clear	goes clear	sits in a  bubble and does nothing	sinks though goes hard after a while
Vinegar	goes completely transparent	goes clear and soft	bubbles and goes frothy	sinks and goes hard

Today I found out that if you add water and vinegar to corn flour that it goes hard but only where you place it. I also found out that if you put iodine in any of the objects it spreads out and doesn't change the texture. If you add vinegar to salt or sugar it has no reaction but if you add it to baking soda it fizzes up. We had to add three drops of each chemical to each item to see what the reaction would be with an even amount of everything. The cornflour and baking soda absorbed all of the liquids but Iodine was easier to see because of the colour.