Question

Common salt is a compound of ______ and ________.

Answer 1

Hint: Common salt is also an ionic salt i.e. the two compounds present in it are bonded ionically. It is formed from a group 1 (alkali metal) and a group 17 (halogen) element.

Complete step by step answer:
Common salt or table salt is a mineral and its chemical name is sodium chloride. In its natural form, it is a crystalline solid and is known as rock salt.
Common salt is an ionic compound and its formula is NaCl. It contains equal proportions of sodium and chlorine. The crystals of salt are translucent and cubic in shape. Generally it appears white but due to the presence of impurities it might look purple.
When we dissolve salt in water, it dissociates into sodium cations and chlorine anions and thus we use it commonly as an electrolyte in electrochemistry. However, from cold solutions, it crystallises as di-hydrate which is $NaCl\cdot 2{{H}_{2}}O$ .

Salt is available naturally in sea water. It is processed in salt mines and also by the evaporation of seawater gives us sea salt. However, only 6% of salt is used for cooking purposes other than that 12% is used in the water conditioning process and 8% is used in deicing the highways and around 6% is used in agriculture. The remaining 68% is used in industries for the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride, plastics, paper pulp etc. Common salt or sodium chloride is formed when the atoms of sodium and chlorine interact. Sodium donates one electron to chlorine and thus an ionic bond is formed between the two atoms forming sodium chloride.
As we can see from the above discussion that common salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine.
Therefore, the correct answer is- Common salt is a compound of sodium and chloride.

Note: Ionic bonds are generally formed between metals and non-metals like here in common salt. Sodium is a group 1 metal and chlorine is a non-metal and they are ionically bonded and form sodium chloride.