According to chemists, hydrolysis is defined as the breaking of a compound involving a reaction with a water molecule. The goal of this experiment is to three-dimensionally show how disaccharides are transformed into monosaccharides using an acid-catalyzed hydrolysis reaction. For the purpose of this lab, it is quite useful to fully understand the following terms: optical rotation and carbohydrate. Optical rotation is measured by a polarimeter, which measures the polarization of light and the rotation of polarized light (influenced by enzymes). It is dependent on the concentration of sample, temperature, length of the tube and the observed rotation. The +/- degrees of the optical rotation determines the presence of d- and l- enantiomers. Finally, a …show more content…
Sucrose was successfully transformed into D-glucose and D- fructose (disaccharide to monosaccharides) through acid-catalyzed hydrolysis. This is obvious when comparing the experimental specific rotations of sucrose and invert sugar with the theoretical values of sucrose (+66.5°) and invert sugar (-39°). However, my partner and I experienced a small complication with the addition of the acid, HCl. After adding the required amount of HCl to the mixture, we experienced no color change for about an hour. Due to this problem, we came up with a solution to add more HCl due to the possibility that the acid was absent from the reaction. An additional 16 drops of HCl was added during the heat reflux phase. The solution displayed a tint of yellow after about 5 minutes of refluxing, and then it was completely yellow after another 5 minutes. Although we added additional amounts of HCl, it is not possible to determine if the inverted sugar contains an excess amount of HCl. The inverted sugar refluxed for a total of one hour and 10 minutes due to a restricted amount of time to complete the