By. Rebekah

Mystery  Powders

  Dear Dexter School.

        We are writing from Orchard School and we found out what the Mystery  Powder  was.  The Mystery Powder  is  salt,  corn  starch  and  backing soda  There are  all  different  substances  that we mixed to find  out what the Mystery Powder  was. 

        We identified that it was  salt because the sugar doesn't look  like crystals  as  much  as the  salt  does. We got backing soda  because it turned  pink  like  it did on one of my tests. If  it is pink, it  means that it  is a  base, and  if  it  is yellow, it  is  an  acid. We  know it  was corn starch  because  it  turned  black.           

        We have  been working with 6 different powders.  They are backing soda, salt, corn starch, citric acid, cavil  carbonate  and  sugar. We  mixed  the  6  powders  with  7 different liquids. The 7 liquids  are  oil, water, alcohol, vinegar, Pr, and Pt.  Pr stands  for phenol red. Pt means phenolphthalein. When we mixed powder with the vinegar  it  bubbled,  but when we mixed it with the bumpy powder it did not bubble. When  we mixed iodine with the corn starch it turned black. 

        I think the  mystery powder came  from the grocery store because the grocery store has baking soda , salt, and  corn starch. I think it  got because  a truck was bringing backing soda, corn starch  and salt to the store.  I think the back of the truck was open because  it didn't hitch all the way. Or I think  that  an old lady was walking home and  a car was coming, so she threw her bag and the corn starch, salt and  backing  soda got all over the school  yard. After the bag fell, she jumped on the sidewalk and dropped her walking stick and ran.

        I  think that it was cool when it turned black  with the corn starch. I thought that it would be a different color but it wasn't , It was black. None of the mystery powder was an acid or a base because it was not yellow. There are a lot of different colors. We had a lot of time. I really liked testing all of the powders with the liquids.

        I was very happy when we found out, I didn't yell out "yes, we did it". I  was just very happy that we got to do mystery powders in fourth grade because it was very fun and it was very interesting.

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This page last updated: 08/28/04 .