Introduction
Catalase is a vital component in the human body. The most crucial of which would be Enzymes, these are protein catalysts. A catalyst speeds up a chemical reaction rate. Virtually all chemical reactions within the human body require a catalase enzyme to be completed in the proper amount of time. The decomposition of hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water can be completed with the catalase enzyme (Thompson, 2005). In the experiment completed, this is shown through the creation of O2. In previous research it has been shown that colder temperatures slow down reaction rates (Bettaieb, 2007). A catalase is more reactive when in a warmer environment, such as the human body. Although, when temperatures get too extreme …show more content…
The cylinder was then sealed and placed in the beaker upside down, following this, the short end of the U-shaped glass tube was fished inside the graduated cylinder. The rubber stopper on the other end was then placed in the opening of the 50 mL Erlenmeyer flask after adding the substrate, hydrogen peroxide, and catalase/buffer. The reaction chamber, Erlenmeyer flask, was then swirled gently until 10 mL of O2 had been created, or nothing happened at all. Then the flask, beaker and cylinder were rinsed. This process was repeated for each part of the experiment using the different substrate concentrations, 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, and different temperature catalase, boiled, room temperature, warm and catalase on ice. For the warm catalase, the flask is placed in a bowl on warm water. For the catalase on ice, the flask was placed in a bowl of ice. The different temperatures all used 0.8% substrate concentration as the control. The time it took to produce 10 mL of O2 was recorded in the data table, then simplified to get mL O2 per