2win wrote:i am now worried about identifying powders... i've never done that before...
Yeah, last year I was pretty worried about memorizing all the powders for SCB, but before long I wasn't using my reference sheet at all (not to mention that you have a reference sheet, so if you do forget some of the characteristics of certain powders, you can still look it up).gyourkoshaven wrote:It's not too hard, just study a lot. Mixtures are a weak point of mine though.
And yes, mixtures are obnoxious. At Regionals last year, we were given just salt, TWO just sugar, and a sugar/salt mixture. Although I think it said somewhere in the rules that which ones are mixtures should be specified, they almost never are.
At Nationals last year, though, the mixtures were pretty cleverly specified- instead of saying on the list of substances or on the answer sheet which ones were mixtures, you had to read through the list of substances and see that some were from presumably pure containers that had spilled, while others were on certain people's shoes, or things like that, showing that those ones were- or could be- mixtures. [Powders at Nats was kind of a nightmare, though; there were something like eleven powders/mixtures, and EIGHT of them were or included flour. It made sense, since it was a crime at a cupcake-baking competition, but I swear it scared the heck out of me. I still finished the powders much more quickly than usual, but it would have taken me even only half the time that it did if I hadn't double-checked and triple-checked all the flour ones to make sure i wasn't just being an idiot (turned out to be good, because the third time I realized that one powder I'd put down as just flour was actually a mixture of flour and sugar lol).]
