[A] Alcohols generally have high boiling points and are highly water soluble. Al

Question

[A] Alcohols generally have high boiling points and are highly water soluble. Alcohols solubility decreases as more C's are added i.e. as the chain gets longer making the alcohol larger. Alcohols with 5 or more C's are insolule. Explain: (1) their solubility behavior and (2) high boiling points.

[B] Explain why carbohydrates are soluble despite having a lot of carbons, e.g. sucrose, C12H22O11, has 12 C's. (Hint: look up sucrose in your text or via Google. How many OH groups does it have? and what do the OH groups have to do with their solubility?)

Explanation / Answer

[A] Alcohols generally have high boiling points and are highly water soluble. Alcohols solubility decreases as more C's are added i.e. as the chain gets longer making the alcohol larger. Alcohols with 5 or more C's are insolule. Explain: (1) their solubility behavior and (2) high boiling points.

Solution :- The solubility of the alcohols decreases with increase in the carbons in the chain and the alcohols with more than 5 carbons are insoluble in water because as the number of the carbons in the alcohol chain increases then it increases the non polar chian in the structure which causes the decrease in the solubility of the alcohols. Because non polar compounds are not soluble in polar solvents like water so when the number of carbons in the chain increases then it causes to increase in the non polar chain.

The alsohols have high boiling points because alcohol contains the OH group which is capable of the hydrogen bonding therefore they form intermolecular hydrogen bonds and need more energy to break these bonds and boils away so the alcohols have higher boiling points because of the hydrogen bonding.

[B] Explain why carbohydrates are soluble despite having a lot of carbons, e.g. sucrose, C12H22O11, has 12 C's. (Hint: look up sucrose in your text or via Google. How many OH groups does it have? and what do the OH groups have to do with their solubility?)

Solution : - Though sucrose have 12 carbons in the structure but it have 8 OH groups which forms hydrogen bonds with water and makes it soluble in the water so as the number of hydroxyl groups increases in the structure then it increases the solubility of the compounds. Therefore the hydrocarbons like sucrose are soluble in water even with having more number of carbons because the hydroxyl groups present in the hydrocarbons like sucrose makes it possible to get solvated by water molecules by forming hydrogen bonds and therefore they are soluble.

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