Question

What are the physical and chemical properties of hydrocarbons?

Answer 1

Hydrocarbons are generally organic compounds which are made up from hydrogen and carbon that’s why they are named as hydrocarbons. Benzene is one of the simplest hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons can be seen in plants and trees.

Complete answer:
The general molecular formula for the hydrocarbon is ${C_x}{H_y}$ . There are many physical and chemical properties of hydrocarbons which can be discussed as below:
Physical properties: In this we can say that alkanes having 10 carbon atoms are generally gases at room temperature while the molecules which have more than 10 carbon atoms may be gases or liquids. Alkanes which have no conjugation in them are generally having low boiling and melting points which weakens the interaction i.e. Van Der Waals interaction between them. Boiling point of the substances is generally dependent on some factors like molecular mass and branching so this conclude that alkanes which have high molecular mass has high boiling point and alkanes having same molecular mass but having a different number of branches has more boiling point as compare to the alkane having no branches or less branches this is due to the reason that Van Der Waals force becomes weak as area increases.
Chemical properties: Rather than physical properties hydrocarbons also shown some chemical properties like benzene generally undergoes electrophilic substitution reactions which can be explained by taking the example of Friedel Crafts alkylation, halogenation and acylation and nitration of benzene also shows it goes through electrophilic substitution reaction.
Hence these are the important physical and chemical properties of hydrocarbons.

Note:
There are many wide applications of hydrocarbons, the first basic one is it is used as fuels like LPG, CNG and hydrocarbons are used in the manufacturing of polymers, in dyes and also serve as lubricating oil and greases.