Final answer:
Your salad is a heterogeneous mixture because its ingredients, such as lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, carrots, and croutons, are not uniformly distributed throughout the mixture. Option c is the answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
Your salad would be classified as a heterogeneous mixture. A heterogeneous mixture is one where the components are not uniformly distributed and can often be seen individually. In the case of your salad, you can see and separate the lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, carrots, and croutons, indicating that it's not the same throughout. Examples of other heterogeneous mixtures include soil and Italian dressing, whereas homogeneous mixtures, like white wine and a commercial sports drink, are uniform throughout.
White wine is a homogeneous mixture, mercury is an element, ranch-style salad dressing is a heterogeneous mixture, and table sugar (sucrose) is a compound. To further explain, mercury (Hg on the periodic table) is a pure chemical element. Sucrose (C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁), the scientific name for table sugar, is a compound because it is made up of more than one type of element chemically bonded together in a fixed ratio.