[lambornima]

Hi guys my name is Nima, im new here and I had a question.

We are doing a "lab" (not really) to determine in which group an unknown solid we are getting belongs to. Through a series of procedures I can see whats what in a process of elimination. what I cant do (and I dont know how ) is being able to distinguish whether or not the intermolcular force holding the molecular solid together is a regular dipole-dipole attraction or hydrogen bonding (since the solid is unknown, we dont know the chemical formula). I know that I would have hydrogen bonding when there is hydrogen and F or O or N.

how do I determine this? what can I do/react/observe/etc?


Thanks,
Nima

[constant thinker]

Do be honest with you, I don't think it's possible to differentiate between dipole-dipole and hydrogen bonding, and still have things relevant to your situation.

The only way I can think of is to find out what the molecular formula of your compound is which you can't do at the high school level do to a lack of access to the equipment. Once you know the molecular formula than you can tell if the compound would have H-bonding, but that defeats your original purpose.