If water, salt, sand, oil, and iron were all combined in a mixture how would you separate them so that each of the ingredients end up in different cups?

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John Doe Profile
John Doe answered

Different size filter paper....since salt dissolves in water, you can pour the water with the dissolved salt onto filter paper and let the paper dry, once the paper dries, you should have salt residue on the filter paper.

Charles Davis Profile
Charles Davis answered

The oil, sand (depending on the make up of the sand) and iron are readily not water soluble, so they would settle out. The salt however might be tricky, as it does dissolve in water, but can be filtered, and would take a special filter to sort it out.

Ray Dart Profile
Ray Dart answered

OK.

Mix everything together. Then place the mixture into a filter funnel and let the water (and salt in solution) filter through.

Allow the water and salt solution to dry and you will be left with the salt.  (If you wanted to save the water, tough,-  but you could heat the water and collect the water vapour using a cooling jacket as exists in a still.

Now, the residue left in the filter paper. A magnet and a brush will make it easy to separate the sand and the iron.

So, Salt, separated. Sand, separated, Iron separated (but stuck to a magnet). Water - well it's now in the atmosphere unless you had specialist equipment to condense it.

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