A student is given a mixture of naphthalene ball’s powder and common salt

A student is given a mixture of naphthalene ball’s powder and common salt. He need to separate this mixture. How will he do this?

The properties of both naphthalene and common salt should be known, before we choose the separation technique.
Naphthalene is a sublimate which on heating changes to gaseous state directly. Hence to separate a volatile compound (sublimate) from a non-volatile compound (non-sublimate), the sublimation process is used.


In a China dish the mixture is kept, and is placed on a stand. An inverted funnel is kept over the mixture in China dish with plugged stem. The sublimate on heating gets collected on the funnel and common salt remains in the China dish.