how can the attractions between polar water moleculers have a higher boiling point than non-polar carbondioxid

Question

ok...heres the whole question

Explain how the attractions between molecules could cause polar water to have a higher boiling point than non-polar carbon dioxide.

please help!

Answer 1

Boiling is when the molecules in a liquid start moving fast enough that they spread apart and form a gas.

Now, with water or another molecule that forms H-bonds the two ends of the molecule each have a slight charge on them, causing one end of the molecule to be attracted to the opposite end of the other molecules. It might be helpful to think of them as tiny magnets, where the north pole of one attracts the south pole of another.

Since the molecules are attracted to one another it takes more effort (energy) to separate them, thus you need to be at a higher temperature before they'll boil.

Answer 2

What happens to molecules when they are heated? They speed up, right?. Can you see how polar molecules clumped together by hydrogen bonds might have more trouble doing that?

In order for the water to boil, the hydrogen bonds between the molecules have to be broken, which requires more energy then if there were no hydrogen bonding, like in the case of a non-polar molecule like CO2

Answer 3

Because it takes more energy to cause a polarized molecule to break away from the rest of the mass of water molecules at the surface. This binding force between polarized molecules (molecules having a dipole electric moment) is called the "van der Waals" force.


Doug