An X-ray investigation of normal paraffins near their melting points

The present paper is a continuation of previous work* on the thermal expansion of normal paraffins. It is confined to an investigation of the lattice changes which take place in the range between room temperature and the individual melting points. The observations are rather complex and certain difficulties in the interpretation of the X-ray photographs arise which make further investigations necessary. Such work is now in progress. There were, however, several unexplained points in the last paper which are now clear and dealt with in the present work. Range of Materials. The investigation was carried out with 15 specimens ranging from C18H38 to C44H90. The method of their preparation has been described previously.