The Hydration of Solutes in Aqueous Solution

Abstract

This thesis is written with several objectives in mind. Most importantly it describes my research involving the calculation of hydration numbers through spectroscopic means. This discussion includes not only my results, but also a description of the laboratory difficulties which encountered. To put these laboratory results into better perspective, I believe an understanding of the term hydration and its implications for the structure of water in aqueous solutions is necessary. Thus, this thesis includes a large amount of introductory material related to proposals for water structure which have been published in the chemical literature. There is also a short section which briefly describes other methods for hydration number determination