Properties of Alkanes

Physical Properties

The alkanes are available as gases, liquids, or solids depending upon their size. The lower chain alkanes up to butane are gasses. The higher alkanes from pentane to hexadecane are liquids and higher than hexadecane are solids.
The branched alkanes have lower boiling points than unbranched alkanes. It is because the vander wall force increases the boiling point, and vander wall forces increase with the increase in area.
Solid alkanes are soft, with low melting points because of strong repulsive forces between electrons on neighboring atoms.
Alkanes are insoluble in water.