Question

At room temperature,table salt is a solid and mercury is a liquid.what conclusion can you draw about the melting points of these substances

Answer 1

That table salt has a high melting point and mercury's melting point is low.

Answer 2

Explanation:

It is known that room temperature is the temperature which is equal to $25^{o}C$ or in kelvin it is equal to 298 K.

Since, room temperature is a low temperature and at this temperature table salt exists as a solid. So, it means that at room temperature there occurs strong intermolecular forces of attraction between the molecules of table salt.

Whereas at room temperature, mercury exists as a liquid. So, there are less strong intermolecular forces of attraction between the molecules of mercury.

This also means that melting point of mercury will be low as it has weak intermolecular forces of attraction as compared to table salt at $25^{o}C$.

Therefore, we can conclude that melting point of mercury is less than the melting point of table salt.