Mystery Powders

Dear Dexter School,

    We've been working on the mystery powder for about a month now, and we finally found out what it is! It is baking soda, cornstarch and salt.

    It must have come from The Best Buy bakery because you can always find those products in baked goods. Someone was probably buying some and the bag ripped open. Everything flew out the window. You probably want to know how we figured this out, don’t you? OK. I’ll tell you.

    We ruled things in and we ruled things out. The hardest thing to figure out was if baking powder or calcium carbonate was  in the mystery powder. But when we dropped vinegar on baking powder, it fizzed more then calcium carbonate did. We knew that was how baking powder reacted with vinegar. When we used Iodine, we were looking to see if it turned black. That would tell us if it was a starch, and it was.

    We used all our senses but couldn't find out if it had salt or sugar. Then my partner showed us a trick to tell the difference. If you take some on your finger and rub the particles together, you get a rough sound if it's salt.

    There where many things that told us the powder had  cornstarch in it and many things told us there was baking powder in it. We got the most reactions for cornstarch and baking powder and our senses told us it had salt. That's how we figured out the mystery powder. I enjoy being a scientist and would be happy to work for you again.

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This page last updated: 08/28/04 .