Intestinal Digestion Lab Report

Introduction
When we eat such things as bread, meat, and vegetables, they are not in a form that the body can use as nourishment. Our food and drink must be changed into smaller molecules of nutrients before they can be absorbed into the blood and carried to cells throughout the body. The things we eat turn into things such as carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Carbohydrates are, any of a large group of organic compounds occurring in foods and living tissues and including sugars, starch, and cellulose. Protein, such as meat, eggs, and beans, consist of large molecules of protein that must be digested by enzymes before they can be used to build and repair body tissues. An enzyme in the juice of the stomach starts the digestion. Further digestion
This creates a slightly basic environment, meaning the semiliquid becomes alkaline. This is when the intestinal digestion begins. The pancreas secrets pancreatic fluid into the intestine. This fluid contains, Amylase, Trypsin, and Lipase. Amylase is released first in the fluid. Amylase breaks down starches into their component sugars. Trypsin hydrolyzes polypeptides, converting them into amino acids. Lipase breaks down fats into glycerol and fatty acids. The bile acids produced by the liver act as natural detergents to dissolve fat in water and allow the enzymes to break the large fat molecules into smaller molecules, some of which are fatty acids and cholesterol. Bile acids combine with the fatty acids and cholesterol and help these molecules to move into the cells of the mucosa. In these cells the small molecules are formed back into large molecules, most of which pass into lymphatic vessels in the intestine called lacteal. These small vessels carry the fat to the veins of the chest, and the blood carries the fat to storage depots in different parts of the
The thought process behind this experiment was to see and be all to time the physical part of digestion. Physical meaning mastication, chewing, of food. We accomplished this with a cup of water, and a whole effervescent tablet. One kept half kept whole, and the other half crushed. The group’s hypothesis was, the half effervescent would dissolve faster, because it has more surface area. Upon completion of the experiment, we found out that, in fact the opposite was true. The crushed up tablet dissolved faster, and this was due to the fact that it had more surface area than the intact