The Effects of Temperature on Enzymes Reaction Rate.
INTRODUCTION
Enzymes are proteins that speed up many chemical reactions in cells. Enzymes affect the rate of almost all chemical reactions which take place in organisms. Like all other proteins, enzyme function may be affected by the change in any aspect of its structure. The effect of a change in enzyme structure is called denaturation; this means that the enzyme becomes inactive. The activity of enzymes is affected by temperature.
The purpose of this lab was to determine the effect of temperature on the rate of enzyme activity. Since the catalase speeds up the decomposition of hydrogen, the rate of catalase activity was measured indirectly by measuring the change in percentage of oxygen produced over a fixed time period. Because enzymes works best at a temperature 37 degrees Celsius and needs to maintain that temperature, I expected that if the enzyme temperature decreases, then the rate of hydrogen peroxide decomposition decreases and as the enzyme temperature increases the rate of hydrogen peroxide decomposition will also increase and then stop.
METHODS
First, each pairs in the group was assigned a temperature. We were assigned a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius. Then a 5ml syringe was rinsed with distilled water and then 3ml of distilled water and 3ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide was added to each test tubes label 1s, 2s, and 3s. The syringe was rinsed again and 5ml of catalase (enzyme) was added into test tube E. Each test tube was placed into a water bath at 37 degree Celsius for 10 minutes. Once the 10 minutes was up, test tube 1s was transfer into a 250ml Nalgene bottle and 10 drops of enzymes form test tube E was added to the bottle. Using an oxygen gas sensor the rate of reaction was graph on a computer for 3 minutes. The 250ml Nalgene bottle was clean after obtaining the data for test tube 1s and the same process was repeated for test tube 2s and 3s. The slope for each test tube at each...