How can you tell one salt from another if they look and taste similar?

Answer 1

Be careful about tasting unknown salts.

There are two ways of easily differentiating salts.

1) Different anions and cations have different solubilities when recombined with other anions or cations. For example: I have two salts one of which might be NaNO3 or might be NaCl. If I put a few drops of AgNO3, silver nitrate, in a solution of each of my unknown salts I will get a white precipitate in the NaCl salt but not in the NaNO3 solution.

There are solubility charts/ rules on many websites.

2) Flame test. Different cations (positive ions) have different colours in a flame. For example I have two edible salts - potassium chloride and sodium chloride. They are both salty. (Actually KCl is not as salty as NaCl). When a wire loop is dipped into a solution KCl it burns with a lilac to even a reddish colour whereas NaCl shows up bright yellow. Flame tests are used for a number of cations that will show a different colour in the visible range. Flame colours are available on the web.

Answer 2

One way to distinguish between salts that look and taste similar is to conduct a chemical analysis to identify their specific compositions. Another method is to test their solubility in different liquids or their behavior when exposed to heat or other external stimuli. Additionally, you could compare their crystal structures or consult a reference guide for identifying salts based on their distinct characteristics.