What does is mean if my melting point is lower than the literature value?

Stacy: What does is mean if my melting point is lower than the literature value?
In an experiment our melting point was 41C lower than the literature melting pnt for ferrocene and 11C lower than the literature melting pnt for acetylferrocene.

What would this suggest?

I know that it could have been due to impurities but what else? I would like to know for future experiments, Thnx 🙂

Answers and Views:

Answer by Max
Pretty sure it will just be impurities. Try recrystallising some more.

A general guide is that organic impurities will lower your melting point while inorganic impurities will raise it.

Answer by Shadow
It means your material is impure.

Impurities lower the melting point. Checking the melting point is a means of determining how pure a sample of a given material actually is.