Why do non-polar solvents dissolve non-polar solutes?
Becuase neither atom has an attraction to anything, or a repulsion of anything, thus they just blend
Can a non-polar solvent dissolve a non-polar solute?
The solubility of a solute or drug is mainly due to the polarity of the solvent due to the dielectric constant. A pharmacist needs to know what solvent he should use when trying to make a drug in solution. Therefore he needs to understand the interactions between a solvent and a solute. A major idea to remember is that LIKE DISSOLVES LIKE. This means that a polar solvent (high dielectric constant) will dissolve a polar solute and a nonpolar solvent (low dielectric constant) will dissolve a nonpolar solute. There are certain mechanisms that solvents act by: Polar solvents weaken the force of attraction between oppositely charged ions in crystals. Polar solvents break covalent bonds of organic molecules. Polar solvents are capable of solvating molecules and ions through dipole interactions. Nonpolar solvents can dissolve nonpolar solutes with the help of weak van der Waals - London forces if the solutes have similar internal pressure. This is due to induced dipole interactions. random motion of the particles causes uniform mixing.
About non-polar solutes in water?
My friend and I are working on a Chemistry project for the final. We decided to put together a lab on Raoult's Law and positive and negative deviations from it. Basically this results from either weak or strong attractions between the solute and solvent, respectively. For the strong attractions, this one's easy, we just use two polar substances, like ethanol and water. We are having much! trouble finding a combination of substances, polar and non-polar (and thus with strong attractions), which are already in our high school's lab inventory and are not carcinogens and are miscible. It's pretty important that the non-polar and polar substances are soluble, which limits our options Does anyone know of a pair of substances (water's always an easy one to find for polar, or we could use ethanol or acetone for polar, both accesible) which are non-polar and polar, miscible, not hazardous to health and probably in the lab inventory? I apologize for the length of this message. This has been pl
What do you mean by a polar solvent?
A solvent is polar if its molecules show polarity.From Wikipedia, ‘Polarity of molecules’:Chemical polarity - WikipediaPolar moleculesA polar molecule has a net dipole as a result of the opposing charges (i.e. having partial positive and partial negative charges) from polar bonds arranged asymmetrically. Water (H₂O) is an example of a polar molecule since it has a slight positive charge on one side and a slight negative charge on the other. The dipoles do not cancel out resulting in a net dipole. Due to the polar nature of the water molecule itself, polar molecules are generally able to dissolve in water.The water molecule is made up of oxygen and hydrogen, with respective electronegativities of 3.44 and 2.20. The dipoles from each of the two bonds (red arrows) add together to make the overall molecule polar.Other examples include sugars (like sucrose), which have many polar oxygen–hydrogen (−OH) groups and are overall highly polar.If the bond dipole moments of the molecule do not cancel, the molecule is polar.Nonpolar moleculesA molecule may be nonpolar either when there is an equal sharing of electrons between the two atoms of a diatomic molecule or because of the symmetrical arrangement of polar bonds in a more complex molecule. For example, boron trifluoride (BF₃) has a trigonal planar arrangement of three polar bonds at 120°. This results in no overall dipole in the molecule.Boron trifluoride.In methane, the bonds are arranged symmetrically (in a tetrahedral arrangement) so there is no overall dipole.Water being a polar solvent mostly dissolves polar substances.Most nonpolar molecules are water-insoluble (hydrophobic) at room temperature. Many nonpolar solvents, such as turpentine, are able to dissolve non-polar substances.