Question

How do you identify between salt and sugar?

Answer 1

Hint: Salt and sugar both are important in day to day life. We need to consume both of them in sufficient quantities to balance it with the primary requirement in our body. They taste different when swallowed.

Complete answer:
Salt and sugar both have similar appearances as both are white crystalline solids. But there are a lot of differences between them which label each of them as distinct substances.
The preliminary tests like texture and taste indicate that salt are different crystalline solids and sugars are different crystalline solids. Salt is salty in taste while sugars are sweet in taste. Further salts are found to absorb moisture from the atmosphere when kept open for a longer time but sugars do not absorb moisture.
The salts and sugars are identified by chemistry investigations. Salts are mainly inorganic compounds of inorganic cations like sodium ion or potassium ion. They exist in ionic form in aqueous solution. But they are not soluble in organic solvents like hexane, ethyl acetate or chloroform etc
Sugars are organic compounds and are commonly known as carbohydrates. They are compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. They are soluble in water as well as soluble in organic solvents like methanol and ethanol etc.
The examples of salts are common salts or table salt (\[NaCl\]), \[KCl\], \[KF\] etc. The examples of sugars are glucose (\[{C_6}{H_{12}}{O_6}\]), sucrose etc. The salts melt at higher temperatures compared to sugars which decompose at lower temperatures.
In sodium chloride the cation is sodium ion and the corresponding anion is chloride ion which is bonded to each other by ionic bonds. However sucrose is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen which are held together with covalent and polar covalent bonds.
The water solubility of salts is independent of temperature but that of sugars are dependent on temperature. Actually the sugars are more soluble in hot water.

Note:
The solubility of both salts and sugars occurs in different ways. On dissolving sodium chloride the ions dissociate completely as sodium and chloride ions. On the other hand the sugar molecules get dissolved due to association forced between the sugar molecules and dissolving medium.