In: Chemistry
Hydrogen bonds and boiling point.
If hydrogen bond is weaker than covalent bond, it's necessary 5 kcal/mol to break a hydrogen bond and 100 kcal/mol to beak a covalent bond. Why, then, the compounds with hydrogen bonds have high boiling points?
When we talk about boiling we are essentially saying that we are breaking the attractive forces between the molecules in order to change the phase. Now when molecules have Hydrogen bonding they have an extra binding force between them. Now we know that Hydrogen bonding is not the real bond but it is strong attractive force between the molecules. So when we heat a substance generally we have to supply heat just enough to break the normal attractive forces but in case if the substance has hydroge bonding, we have to supply additional heat in order to break hydrogen bonds. Hence substance having hydrogen bonds have higher boling points that the one which do not have.