After observing the evidence that we received from this experiment it is clear that the results thoroughly support my hypothesis. Within my hypothesis I had stated that the melting order from first to last was, as follows, paraffin, glucose, sucrose, and finally, salt. The results that we gathered supported this exact hypothesis. The first substance to melt was indeed paraffin and the second was glucose, and then sucrose and finally salt. The results are supported by the basic knowledge of intermolecular forces regarding hydrogen bonds, London Dispersion forces, as well as Dipole-Dipole, and simple ionic bonds in the case of sodium chloride. The molecule with the least amount of these forces is the one with the weakest bonds, …show more content…
My results support this hypothesis evidently due to it melting third. Although sucrose has all of the intermolecular forces and at a greater amount than glucose, it has however, covalent bonds which are much weaker than the ionic bonds within salt. This is due to the fact that sucrose has 22 hydrogen atoms and 12 carbon atoms along with 11 oxygen atoms. This provides for lots of hydrogen bonding and dispersion forces as well as dipole-dipole to be present but those ionic bonds are simply not present making it melt before salt as recorded in our observations. Salt was the last to melt and this is due to one main reason. It is because within salt, electrons are transferred creating ionic bonds which are much stronger than the covalent bonds present in all of the other substances. This is why the result that salt melted last is accurate due to the ionic bonds being much stronger than covalent bonds, and therefore much more difficult to break, therefore leading to a higher melting point. Which would explain it melting last. By looking at the results that I obtained and by looking at scientific reasoning to why these results occurred it is reliable to say that intermolecular forces do indeed have an impact on the melting point and overall energy required …show more content…
The results that were obtained were very conclusive and therefore have minimal errors present. This is due to the procedure being fairly straight-forward and easy to conduct which also reduces the chances for error. That being said, there are always sources of potential error even though the results obtained can seem to be accurate and reliable. Starting off with the procedure itself or in other words the systematic errors. The procedure, although straight-forward, lacks accuracy. This also ties into measurement errors. The method used to place the substances onto the metal lid was to simply use a scoopula. This leads to the inference that perhaps one substance had a larger mass on the lid than another substance. This is crucial to the reliability of the results. Although the results acquired support scientific theory and knowledge, it may be the case that one substance melted faster than the other due to less of it being heated up. This measurement error can easily be improved, for if I were to conduct this experiment once again I would make sure to change the procedure to having to weigh the substances to make sure every substance sample has the same mass, and then place it on the lid to melt. This would greatly reduce the impact of the error on the final result due to each substance having the same amount of it being melted and therefore making the results much more reliable. The procedure also states to use a