Experiment-- What is Life?

Today we had a discussion to find out how we could test whether life forms were living or not.
We were given 5 substances. This is my evaluation on them:

Our group split up into two, and I did the test-tube experiment with my partner. We added 3ml of water to each substance, and these were our observations:
10 minutes later

After adding water,
Nothing happens to substance A. It sinks down to the bottom.

The water in substance B becomes milky and murky. It appears to have dissolved into one lump.

Substance C has expanded in size.

Substance D turned red. Some of it floated but some stayed at the bottom.
2/3 of Substance E floated to the surface, the other remained at the bottom. There appear to be no changes.

We repeated the experiment, but this time with glucose solution instead of water.
Glucose solution is a bare simple form of nutrition.

These were our observations:

We were unable to determine if the substances were living or non-living from this experiment, but I believe that my other team-mates, who did this experiment on a petri-dish, will have different observations