How do you differentiate experimentally between alcohol and carboxylic acid?

Answer 1

Alcohols are soluble in water (the longer the carbon chain the less soluble it will be)

Carboxylic acids are insoluble in water.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

There are many ways you can test for them experimentally and other wise

one way would be by adding oxidizing agent such as Potassium dichromate.

Alcohol will react with this agent to form ketone or aldehyde and then carboxylic acid.

Carboxylic acid will not react with this oxidizing agent.

Answer 3

I only need one test to distinguish between the two: stick a pH probe in them. The three alcohols you're likely to have - ethanol, methanol and isopropanol - are all pH 7 or very close to it. Carboxylic acids are quite a bit lower in pH. If you have litmus paper, that works too.

You can also check the odor - alcohol smells like alcohol, acid smells like acid.

If you had a piece of lead you could stick it in the liquid and wait a few days; carboxylic acids will form lead salts that exhibit themselves as a white deposit on the bottom of your reaction vessel, and alcohol doesn't do anything.

Answer 4

Put a small quantity of Sodium bicarbonate in solutions of both the compounds carboxylic acid produces brisk effervescence while alcohol does not.