15/05/2013 Week 5 Wednesday Home 2

After further understanding of research question and hydrogen bonds, a flaw has arisen in my one of my assumptions earlier on in my blog under the post titled 1/05/2013 Week 3 Wednesday Home.

Under this post in the 6th paragraph I stated that:

I hypothesise this as volume contraction is a direct result of hydrogen bonding from the Oxygen molecule bonding to the Hydrogen's  connected to the carbon chains of the alkanols, when these hydrogen bonds occur they ultimately surround and compress the alkanol molecule. As alkanol carbon chains get larger e.g. methanol, ethanol, propanol etc... There are more readily available hydrogen's available to bond, therefore a more complex alkanol should result in a large volume contraction.

 I took the liberty of constructing a diagram to assist in the explanation. Paragraph 6  has suggested the bond indicated between Ethanol and Water in the diagram above, however a for a bond to become a hydrogen bond it can only be bonded  to an O, N or F atom in one molecule becoming attached to an O, N, or F atom in a different molecule. The problem here is that the Hydrogen is bonded to a Carbon and an Oxygen.

The correct bond is indicated in the diagram above and shows hydrogen being bonded to two oxygen molecules. This bond is bonding to the alcohol group of the alkanol and not the carbon chain. The correct assumption written in the blog post: 1/05/2013 Week 3 Wednesday Home is:

I hypothesise this as volume contraction is a direct result of hydrogen bonding from the Oxygen molecule bonding to the Hydrogen's connected to the alcohol group of the alkanols, when these hydrogen bonds occur; they ultimately surround and compress the alkanol molecule. As alkanol carbon chains get larger e.g. methanol, ethanol, propanol etc... There are more readily available hydrogen's available to bond, therefore a more complex alkanol should result in a large volume contraction.