Posts Tagged ‘antarctic’

The melting points from benzene to cyclohexane: a prime example of dispersion forces in action?

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

One of the delights of wandering around an undergraduate chemistry laboratory is discussing the unexpected, if not the outright impossible, with students. The >100% yield in a reaction is an example. This is sometimes encountered (albeit only briefly) when students attempt to recrystallise a product from cyclohexane, and get an abundant crop of crystals when they put their solution into an ice-bath to induce the crystallisation. Of the solvent of course! I should imagine 1000% yields are possible like this.

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