[Anna55]

Hello!

We will be given three bottles of an unknown organic compound, two will be a pure substance and the third will be a mixture of the previous two. How can you identify which bottle is the mixture? When doing the experiments, should you assume that the bottle which gives mixed results are the mixture? Is there a better and more scientific approach to the problem?

What is a simple test to identify hexan-1-ol and methylpentane-1-ol? I know that the compounds have slightly different boiling point and solubility in water; however that is difficult to measure.

Thank you in advance!

[Dan]

Hello!
How can you identify which bottle is the mixture?

If the components are completely unknown, I'd probably opt for physical tests. Read about colligative properties. This should indicate which bottle is the mixture fairly easily, but will not  give any structural information. The problem is that if you have absolutely no idea of what could be in the bottles, random scanning for functional groups with different chemical tests could take a long time (but would work of course).

What is a simple test to identify hexan-1-ol and methylpentane-1-ol? I know that the compounds have slightly different boiling point and solubility in water; however that is difficult to measure.

It probably doesn't matter, but which of the 3 isomers of methylpentan-1-ol are you referring to?

I can't think of a chemical test off the top of my head for those two, so bp may be the way to go. Maybe you could calculate the densities?

[fledarmus]

How good is your boiling point measurement technique?

Here are the boiling points of various hexanols including the n-hexanol and the three possible methyl-1-pentanols. If you measured the boiling points of the chemicals in the three bottles, what would you expect to see?

[Nosterius]

It all depends on the equipment you have access to for this lab.

A simple test to identify hexan-1-ol from its isomers would be an NMR spectra.

Otherwise, I would assume gas chromatography would be an ideal choice. Retention time in GC is related to the boiling point of the compound. It would also allow you to separate and quantify the mixture of products you have.