Why are alcohols generally more involatile than ketones, and aldehydes?

Answer 1

Alcohols have hydrogen bonding available to them as an intermolecular force. Neither ketones nor aldehydes have this operating between individual molecules.

Alcohols should have intrinsically higher boiling points than aldehydes or ketones because no such intermolecular force is available for hydrogen bonding, which happens when hydrogen is bound to strongly electronegative atoms like fluorine, oxygen, and nitrogen.

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Answer 2

Mateo Aguilar

The higher boiling points of alcohols compared to ketones and aldehydes are primarily due to hydrogen bonding in alcohols, which is stronger than the dipole-dipole interactions in ketones and aldehydes.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.