Conformational contribution to the entropy of melting. II. Comparison between theory and experiment

Experimental and theoretical values of the conformational entropy contribution ΔSc to the melting entropy of linear hydrocarbons agree fairly well; however, the chain model in which each bond has three possible conformations (g+, g−, and t) seems to be probably oversimplified. However, ratios of ΔSc to the actual number of bonds, which are effective in increasing the number of conformations, increase theoretically with chain length, whereas experimental values decrease. This latter behavior can be due to the increasing intra- and intermolecular packing difficulties as the hydrocarbon chain length increases.