A colleague has been attempting to use hydrolysis to decompose large polymers into his constituent monomers, but after each batch, he transfers the product to the scale using an iron spoon, weighs the product, and throws it away. When you ask why he does this, your colleague tells you that each time he’s weighed the reactants before hydrolysis and the products afterward and has found a slight increase in mass, indicative of a contaminant among the monomers that would render them unusable. What mistake has your colleague made?

Question

a. He doesn’t wait for the products of the hydrolysis reaction to cool off before weighing them; hot monomers weigh more than cool monomers.
b. He has been using an iron spoon to stir his solutions, which results in iron oxide contamination.
c. He has forgotten that hydrolysis bonds hydrogen and hydroxyl groups to the monomers, which would increase their mass proportionally.
d. Hydrolysis reactions bond monomers together; he has been inadvertently creating more massive polymers instead.

Answer 1

c. He has forgotten that hydrolysis bonds hydrogen and hydroxyl groups to the monomers, which would increase their mass proportionally.