Home chemistry : Funky Forensics

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.

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.  A black piece of cardboard paper 
3.  White paper
4. Iodine


Steps

1. Fold the black cardboard paper lengths way and in half so it creases the cardboard.
2. Then draw across the crease lines to make 4 squares, Label them Baking soda, sugar, etc
3. Put 4  Chemicals on 4 folded squares and split them into 3.
4. 3 drops of Water/Iodine/Vinegar into a third of each chemical

Findings:

Words to use: Absorbed, spread, frothed, fizzed, melted, blob,

	Sugar	Salt	Baking Soda	Cornflour
Appearance	A light white	harder white	white	soft white
Texture	Fine crystal	More crystal	Very soft, Crumbles	A fine crumble
Smell	Doesn't really have a smell.	Smells like the ocean	Kinda smells like dust	Also smells like dust
Iodine	Darker orange	Turned darker, and sticky	Make it turn darker and thicker.	Made it dark purple with a tiny bit of pink.
Water	Silky wet	Really wet runny	wet	Slimy, wet almost oobleck
Vinegar	Smelled bad, and white wet	wet	fixed up	Incapable rolled off

Conclusion
I learned that nothing is the same when you use different chemicals, For example, the water stayed the same whilst the iodine changed the colour and texture of the powder. Pretty cool I would have to say the cornflour changed a really cool colour when we added the iodine.