Question

Which type of substance would best dissolve in a solvent that was made of nonpolar molecules.

Answer 1

Lthough much of the explanation for why certain substances mix and form solutions and why others do not is beyond the scope of this class, we can get a glimpse at why solutions form by taking a look at the process by which ethanol, C2H5OH, dissolves in water. Ethanol is actually miscible in water, which means that the two liquids can be mixed in any proportion without any limit to their solubility. Much of what we now know about the tendency of particles to become more dispersed can be used to understand this kind of change as well.
Picture a layer of ethanol being carefully added to the top of some water (Figure below). Because the particles of a liquid are moving constantly, some of the ethanol particles at the boundary between the two liquids will immediately move into the water, and some of the water molecules will move into the ethanol. In this process, water-water and ethanol-ethanol attractions are broken and ethanol-water attractions are formed. Because both the ethanol and the water are molecular substances with O−H bonds, the attractions broken between water molecules and the attractions broken between ethanol molecules are hydrogen bonds. The attractions that form between the ethanol and water molecules are also hydrogen bonds (Figure below). There you go