Is the molar volume a physical or chemical property?

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Is the molar volume a physical or chemical property?

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Answer 1 · 2016-06-26T23:49:13

Well, since you can observe it without changing the composition or form of the matter, it's a physical property.

(In fact, if you do change the form of the matter, the molar volume changes, so that further demonstrates its physical nature.)

Molar volume is sometimes labeled $¯ ¯ ¯ V = \frac{V}{n}$ $barV = V/n$ , where $V$ $V$ is the volume in $L$ $"L"$ and $n$ $n$ is the $mol$ $"mol"$ s of substance. It is the volume occupied by $1 mol$ $"1 mol"$ of the substance.

As long as you can measure the volume, and you know the mass and what substance you're looking at (so you can use its molar mass in $g/mol$ $"g/mol"$ ), you can find the $mol$ $"mol"$ s, which allows you to find the molar volume.

EXAMPLE

If you have a volume of $116 mL$ $"116 mL"$ of ethanol ( $EtOH$ $"EtOH"$ ), and you acquire its mass as $92.136 g$ $"92.136 g"$ , then convert to $mol$ $"mol"$ s and you have a pure molar volume of:

$color(blue)(barV_"EtOH"^"*") = "0.116 L"/(92.136 cancel"g") xx (46.068 cancel"g")/"mol"$

$=$ $"0.058 L/mol"$

$=$ $color(blue)("58.0 mL/mol")$

(Do keep in mind that a real liquid would have a different pure molar volume than a partial molar volume in a mixture, if we didn't assume volumes were additive.)

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Is the molar volume a physical or chemical property?

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