Volume of oxygen given off in the reaction between catalase and hydrogen peroxide.

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Volume of oxygen given off in the reaction between catalase and hydrogen peroxide.

Introduction

Catalase is a biological enzyme, which helps to speed up the reaction between catalase (celery) and hydrogen peroxide. The active site is contained within the enzyme and this is the important part, once the substrate is locked into the active site the reaction takes place then the products will be released with the enzyme moving on to another substrate.

Enzymes are very specific to the reaction that they take place in and can only work on certain products this is called the 'lock and key' method.

This method helps to speed up the reactions and to allow the correct substrate to interact with the correct enzyme.

Prediction

When the test is run I predict that the higher the concentration of catalase then the faster the reaction will occur due to the increased concentration of the enzymes in the liquidised celery. With the change in concentrations between the catalase and the distilled water then you should see a change in the amount oxygen produced as the catalase reacts with the hydrogen peroxide.

Variables

The only variable that there is going to be in this experiment is going to be the concentration of the liquidised celery; this will be changed in proportion to the percentage of distilled water so that it equals 100%.

The liquidised celery will be kept at room temperature, as this should prove warm enough for the reaction to occur, if the liquidised celery was to be heated up then you would have to be careful not to denature the catalase enzymes. Heating up the liquidised celery will cause the enzymes to move around more and increase the chance of it hitting a substrate molecule.

The volume of hydrogen peroxide needs to be kept the same so that the number of substrate molecules is kept the same so as not to increase the chance of a collision between an enzyme and a substrate molecule.
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All these variables are needed to be kept constant so that the experiment is a fair test that will give me the best results possible.

Pilot test

A pilot test was carried out to see if any adjustments were needed before the final test was carried out to make sure I could get the best results possible. A few adjustments were made like putting the catalase and the hydrogen peroxide into a conical flask rather than a boiling tube as I found that with the higher concentrations of catalase the reaction would happen so ...

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