Resonance Energy of an Arene Hydrocarbon from Heat of Combustion Measurements.

A simple experimental method for determination of the resonance energy by measuring the energies of combustion for two isomeric compounds, aromatic 1-tert-butyl-3,5-dimethylbenzene and nonaromatic trans,trans,cis-1,5,9-cyclododecatriene is proposed. Both compounds not only have the same molecular formula, but also contain the same number of sp2 and sp3 carbon atoms. After converting the obtained values into the gas phase heats of combustion and subtracting one value from another, the resulting mean resonance energy of 184 kJ/mol was obtained. The proposed method can be offered as an experiment for an undergraduate physical chemistry lab curriculum.