Determining The Size Of An Oleic Acid Molecule

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Determining the Size of an Oleic Acid Molecule The objective if this experiment is to determine the height of an Oleic Acid molecule. Oleic acid is a molecule that has a hydrophobic molecule on one end and a hydrophilic molecule on the other end. When a small amount of oleic acid is placed on a water surface the molecules align themselves in such a way that all the hydrophobic molecules are facing away from the surface of the water and the hydrophilic molecules are on the surface of the water. When a drop of solution is released onto the surface of the water it spreads itself into a one-molecule thick layer in the shape of a very flat cylinder. To facilitate the viewing and measuring of the very flat cylinder we need to take a pizza pan of water and fill it with water to cover the entire surface. Once it is filled we need to sprinkle some lycompodium powder onto the surface of the water using your small spatula. This will be used to outline our oil spot when we place one drop of the diluted solution onto the water surface. One other thing we will do to make the experiment more visible is to add a few crystals of potassium permanganate to darken the water. We are also going to dilute the Oleic acid down to a 500:1 ratio. To accomplish this dilution we will take 200ml of ethyl alcohol and add 0.4ml Oleic acid and stir the mixture. This mixture is now a 0.2% solution of ethyl alcohol/Oleic acid. To conduct the experiment we need to determine the amount of solution that will be falling from the dropper into the water that has the lycompodium powder on the surface. To determine this measurement we will take the dropper and fill a graduated cylinder to a volume of 3cm3 then divide by three to get a more accurate measurement of 1cm3. From this point we need to determine the volume of one drop and divide by the number of drops and get the amount of

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