Is Baking Sodathe Same Thingas Baking Powder?

Baking Soda is NOT baking powder. Do
NOT try to clean your oven with baking
powder!

Yesterday, a woman sent me an email that
tells her tale of woe of mistakenly using
baking powder instead of baking soda:

Hi,

Have been reading your ideas and dashed off to
sort oven. Made a big mistake as used baking
powder, not soda.

Worse, made a paste as had not yet got the bottle!
Now have stinky oven with brown powder-paste!

I now have the bottle and the soda. Will it get
rid of the stinky smell and the paste and carbon?

Look forward to your ideas!

Best wishes,
Sue

Here's how Wikipedia describes baking powder:

Baking Powder

According to Wikipedia, baking soda is definitely not baking
powder. Instead, baking soda is an ingredient of baking powder.

The above article seems to say that baking powder generally consists
of 3 things:

1. baking soda
2. an acid
3. an inert starch

For the purposes of this discussion, an inert substance
is a substance that doesn't do anything but act as a
filler. The article mentions corn starch as a possible
filler.

I'm going to guess that the starchy filler is what can
get you into trouble. Starch is mostly carbon I'm
going to guess. After all, starch is a carbohydrate.
The very name, carbohydrate, implies carbon.

Therefore, if you try to use baking powder, instead of
baking soda, to clean your oven, you end up baking carbon
on to the sides and floor of your oven instead. This is
what I"m guessing happened to the woman who wrote the above
email. She ended up baking starch on to the walls of her
oven.

All of this is pure guesswork on my part. I've never made
the mistake of trying to clean an oven with baking powder,
so I don't know for sure.

I'll further guess that the problem can be solved by going
back to using baking soda (not baking powder!) as the cleaning
agent. Since it may be carbon that has baked on to the sides
of her oven, baking soda may solve the problem.

Again, this is all guesswork on my part. However, if this were
my problem, I'd probably try baking soda first.

Ed Abbott