Question

You are provided with a fine white coloured powder which is either sugar or salt. How would you identify it without tasting it? To examine if the fine white coloured powder is sugar or salt we can conduct two experiments.

Answer 1

The following properties are applicable to distinguish between sugar and salt:

Alcohol test:

• Take two beakers containing alcohol.
• Now add Salt to one beaker and Sugar to another beaker.
• We saw that sugar will dissolve but the salt will not in alcohol.

Melting test:

• Heat these salts separately; sugar melts easily but salt does not.
• Because sucrose has a disintegration and melting point between $190-192°\mathrm{C}$, sugar dissolves into liquid when heated. As a result, sugar will develop a light brown color. As it is heated more, sugar chars to black colour.
• Salt has a melting point of $800.7°\mathrm{C}(1,473.3°\mathrm{F}\mathrm{or}1,073.8\mathrm{K})$. If we do not heat it to that temperature, nothing changes.

Dissolving test:

• Take two beakers containing water.
• Now add Salt to one beaker and Sugar to another beaker.
• The solution containing salt dissociates into Sodium and chloride ions when dissolved in water and conducts electricity due to the availability of ions but sugar is a covalent compound which does not produce ions. So, the sugar solution does not conduct electricity.