Home > Community > Why does the melting point of branched alkanes increase, even though the surface area of the alkanes decrease in that sense?
Upvote

15

Downvote
+ Geometry
+ Science
+ Chemistry
+ Organic chemistry
Posted by
Aidan Cooney

Why does the melting point of branched alkanes increase, even though the surface area of the alkanes decrease in that sense?

Andy Wiskonsky  Follow

Neither one. As an unanimated entity salt is devoid of actions and cannot increase its melting point.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
Charles MacKay  Follow

Who said they do? For pentane, for example, the trend is

n-pentane mp - 129.7

iso-pentane mp -159.9

tert-pentane mp -16.6

The

The unbranched pentane has only the second lowest mp, while the branched chain is lowest and the spherical one has the highest mp. The point at which a crystal melts is governed by the energy required to disrupt it, and while branching has a role in this, packing efficiency has a role also.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
David L. Avery  Follow

Longer carbon chains have stronger London dispersion forces. They pull the molecules together increasing the energy required to pull them apart and melt them.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
Claire Stocker  Follow

There isn't up and down the group.. Alkane is not a group in periodic table or anything.. but the melting point is directly proportional to the molecular mass of an alkane.. the longer the carbon chain, the higher the melting point

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
David Quinn  Follow

I will suggest that increasing the length of the alkane chain makes the molecule more hydrophobic and less able to be conductive.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
David S. Rose  Follow

Boiling of compounds involve the breakage of bonds, greater the number of bonds greater will be the boiling point.

On moving from lower to higher members among the alkanes like methane, ethane , propane, butane and so on, there are increase in molecular mass and number of bonding which contribute to the increased boiling point.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
Andrew Karonis  Follow

To expand Shivani’s answer, above, a little bit, the zig-zag chains of straight- chain Alkanes are able to fit snugly together, thus maximising the surface area in contact, and increasing the associative van Der Waals forces. Branches on the chain force the zig-zag chains apart, thus reducing the van der Waals forces.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
Dipim Gautam  Follow

Why does the melting point of branched alkanes increase?

It doesn’t, according to data I found. At least not always. Here are melting points as I found them.

C4 alkanes

  • butane, -138º
  • isobutane, -160º

C5 alkanes

  • pentane, -130º
  • isopentane, -160º
  • neopentane, -17º

C6 alkanes

  • hexane, -95º
  • isohexane, -160º
  • 3-methylhexane, -163º
  • 2,3-dimethylbutane, -124º
  • neohexane, -98º

C7 alkanes

  • heptane, -90º
  • isoheptane, -119º
  • 3-methylheptane, -119º
  • neoheptane, -124º

What I found was that the melting points of isomeric alkanes decreases with branching. This makes sense, because — unlike boiling point — melting point does not depend only on surface area. It also depends on “stackability” of the molecules in the solid.

Butane molecules stack on each other much better than isobutane molecules; the same is true for pentane vs. isopentane, hexane vs. isohexane, and heptane vs. isoheptane. (“Iso” means that the end carbon is removed and reattached two carbons in, to create a branch.)

The major anomalies are neopentane and neohexane, which are spherical or nearly so. Spheres stack very well, and so their melting points are higher than other branched isomers — or, in the case of neopentane, even the straight-chain isomer.

However, this is not true of neoheptane (2,2-dimethylpentane), as the 3-carbon-long “tail” interferes with the smooth sphericity of the molecule and results in poor stacking; you end up with a melting point comparable to the other branched C7 isomers.

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote
Debra Barnett  Follow

Well, they have longer hydrocarbyl chains …. and the LONGER the chain, the MORE opportunity the molecule has for chain-chain interaction. And so let us review the data…

More

Upvote

VOTE

Downvote