Question

How would you separate tea leaves from prepared tea?
A. Simple distillation
B. Chromatography
C. Filtration
D. None of these

Answer 1

Hint: Well, it’s all chemistry, a tea is a chemical mixture of tea leaves, sugar (${\text{C}}_6{\text{H}}_{12}{\text{O}}_{22}$), water, and milk (an emulsion of oil in water). Tea leaves are solid particles, if left untouched would get suspended in the solution of tea.


Complete solution:
Tea is not a pure solution as it is a mixture of water and other substances, as mentioned tea leaves are solid and the rest of the solution is liquid, the method used to separate solids from liquids is known as filtration. Infiltration, a porous membrane, is used which let’s liquid pass and does not allow the solids to get through.
Therefore, we would use the method of filtration to separate tea leaves from tea.
However,we can define the other methods so that we can compare why filtration is the right method .
-Simple distillation is a process used to separate two liquids having different boiling points, the liquid mixture is boiled in a closed system and the liquid having less boiling point is collected by trapping the vapours evolved in the initial stages.
-Chromatography is a process used to separate different constituents of a solution mixture by using the property of adsorption.
Hence, the correct option is (C).


Note:: Another way to identify the process that is used to separate tea leaves from tea is to observe the practical separation, often time we use a metal gauze with tiny holes that allows the liquid tea to pass and hold the solid tea leaves, those tea leaves are called the filtrate. Hence, the process is filtration.