White Powder | Home Chemistry

For science today, we are looking at white powder and some forensics. The scenario is, ' A bag of white powder has been confiscated by the airport customs. You need to find out what white powder it is?'. We need to find out what type of white powder it is.

There are some examples of everyday kitchen white powder.

• Flour
• Cornflour
• Sugar
• Salt
• Baking Soda
• Baking Power
• Icing Sugar
• Tartaric Acid
• Citric Acid
• Gluten Free Flour

Today, we will be using a small amount of four white powders in our cardboard that we have, which is sugar, baking soda, cornflour and salt.

Aim: To learn about the makeup of different white powders.

Materials:

1. Pipette
2. Vinegar
3. Iodine
4. Cardboard
5. Sugar
6. Baking Soda
7. Salt
8. Water

Steps:

1. Get a black cardboard.
2. Fold the cardboard into four sections - sugar, baking soda, cornflower and salt.
3. Put the sugar, baking soda, cornflower and salt in the sections - one spoon each.
4. Get some iodine. 
5. Split the sugar, baking soda, cornflower and salt into thirds.
6. Drop three drops of iodine into one-third of the four sections.
7. With a pipette, drop three drops of vinegar from the pipette to the other one-third of the four sections.
8. Lastly, with a pipette, drop three drops of water to the last one-third of the four sections.
9. Watch the chemical reactions happen. Record and observe what happened.

Findings:

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	White	White	White	White
Texture	Medium	Medium	Medium	Small
Smell	No smell	No smell	No smell	No smell
Iodine	Absorbed the sugar and dissolved	Absorbed the salt and dissolved	Hard like gel	Some tipped off and hard like gel
Water	Absorbed the sugar and dissolved	Nothing happens	Absorbed the water and dissolved	Hard like gel
Vinegar	Absorbed the sugar and dissolved	Nothing happens	Bubbles up and releases Carbon Dioxide (Co2)	Hard like gel

Conclusion

Finding out the mystery powder.

The mystery white powder was Baking Soda. We knew that it was baking soda was that when we added Vinegar to the baking soda it bubbled up. When we added Iodine it made the iodine in the baking soda hard.

It was so weird that there was no smell in any of the powders. The sugar absorbed when we added the three items to the sugar - iodine, vinegar, water, it absorbed the sugar and dissolved the sugar.

For salt, when we added the iodine, it absorbed the salt. But when we added the water and vinegar, it stayed on top and nothing happened.

For baking soda, there were different behaviours when we added several things. When we added iodine it turned the baking soda hard like gel. The water absorbed the baking soda and dissolved. Of course, when we add vinegar to baking soda, it will make bubbles like in a volcano, we add vinegar in the baking soda in the volcano, then the bubbles come up, which releases Carbon Dioxide.

For cornflour, the iodine made it hard and one drop tipped off. When we added the vinegar and water it made it hard like the iodine.

I hope you like my post about White Powder. Comment down below if you've done an experiment like that. Have a cool day!! Bye!!