Question

How would you rank compounds from highest to lowest solubility: ethanol, hexanol, butanol?

Answer 1

Hint:At a certain temperature, when a maximum amount of solute is dissolved in a solvent, it is known as solubility. For example- sugar dissolved in water, the property that helps sugar molecules to dissolve in water is known as solubility.

Complete step-by-step answer:
As we have discussed, that solubility is the property of solute to dissolve in solvent. Solute is a substance that is dissolved in a minimum amount as a solvent and it can be solid, liquid or gases.
Factors that affect solubility are-
Temperature:The solubility of the solute can be increased by changing the temperature. If a solute is solid or liquid then it can be dissolved completely by raising the temperature. But in case of gaseous substances, the solubility is inversely proportional to temperature that means if the temperature is increased then the gases will expand and escape from the solvent.
Forces and bonds:As we know that like dissolves like. The unlike substances will face more challenges during solubility. The polar solvent will dissolve the polar solute. For example- water is a polar solvent it will dissolve ethanol as it is a polar solute.
Pressure:The solubility of the gas increases if we increase the partial pressure of the gas.
In this question, we have to rank the compounds from highest to lowest solubility. The given compounds are ethanol, hexanol, butanol.
If we are talking about how soluble these compounds are in water, then we know that water is a polar molecule which will dissolve polar compounds so that it increases its solubility. The non-polar molecules will show lower solubility when dissolved in water.
When the number of carbon present in a molecule increases, then that molecule becomes non polar. According to the given compounds, hexanol has the highest number of carbon present and hence it is non polar. Ethanol has the lowest number of carbon atoms present and hence it is a polar compound.
To rank the compounds from highest to lowest solubility, it can be written as-
Ethanol
Note:In this question we have concluded that the solubility of the compound depends upon how polar a solute and a solvent is. The polar solute dissolves polar solvent and hence has high solubility. If the solute is nonpolar and the solvent is polar then the solubility of the compound decreases.