RESEARCH QUESTION:
What is the effect of various temperatures, 0°C, room temperature, 37°C, 50°C, 60°C, on the number of oxygen gas bubbles liberated, in a decomposition reaction between the enzyme Catalase, obtained from crushed mung beans, and 2% of the substrate Hydrogen Peroxide?
INTRODUCTION:
Enzymes are biological catalysts that increase the rate of chemical reactions without they themselves being involved in the reaction itself. Enzymes are proteins that have a 3-Dimesional shape and contain a region called the active site to which only a specific substrate binds to, structurally.
In this experiment, the enzyme Catalase will be used. Catalase is commonly found in animal and plant cells (but a significant amount is found in mung beans), and plays a fundamental role in the human body by catalyzing Hydrogen Peroxide, which is a poisonous waste product, into harmless products of Water and Oxygen gas.
2H2O2 ====== 2H2O + O2
This experiment will investigate the effect of temperature on the rate of catalase activity by measuring the number of oxygen gas bubbles produced.
HYPOTHESIS:
For a reaction to occur, particles must collide with sufficient enough energy to break the existing bonds and form new ones. As temperature increases, so will the kinetic energy of the Hydrogen peroxide and catalase molecules. This means that the molecules are moving faster. Faster movement of the reacting molecules would increase the frequency of collisions and thus, increase the number of effective collisions taking place. As a result, more oxygen gas would be produced as the rate of reaction has increased.
Rate of reaction is directly proportional to the temperature until the optimum temperature has been reached, after which the enzyme denatures, meaning the shape of the enzyme has irrevocably changed so that the substrate can no longer fit into the active site, resulting in an extremely slowed down/stopped reaction.
Since