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Is adding sugar to lemonade a physical or chemical change?

Answer 1

Depends how technical you want to get. Generally, it is a physical change.

The process of dissolving sugar is essentially like unstacking a room full of boxes; each box represents a glucose molecule, and you have to go in and grab each one and throw it out separately. Since all of the glucose are still glucose, there won't be any reaction.

Now technically, glucose in it's cyclic form has a linkage called a hemiacetal, and this linkage can break, particularly in the presence of #H^+# ions. Lemonade doesn't have a ton of #H^+# ions, but the reaction would occur a bit more. The reaction already occurs in solution (in an equilibrium), but might be more likely to react in acidic lemonade.

Stick with tangible alteration, please.

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Answer 2

Natalie Anton

A physical change occurs when sugar is added to lemonade.

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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.