How Does Ph Affect Enzyme Activity

Discussion: The specific purpose for this study was to see how enzyme activity would change as there was a change in temperature and pH. Both temperature and pH were hypothesized to have an affect on enzyme activity. Each had an optimal temperature. At this point, the rate of enzyme activity would stop increasing and begin to decrease. For temperature, it was hypothesized that the optimal temperature would be 48°C. For pH, it was hypothesized that the optimal pH would be 7.
As temperature was increased, the enzyme activity also increased. Because temperature is the measure of kinetic energy, an increase in temperature would cause an increase in kinetic energy. This means that particles are moving quickly with high entropy, which causes more collisions to happen. Due to this, there is a higher probability of substrates colliding with enzymes, thus making the reaction occur. This …show more content…
However, this was not the case in the experiment, meaning this part of the hypothesis is rejected. In fact, at a pH of 7, the enzyme activity has already begun to decrease. Rather, the optimal pH for enzyme activity was at a pH between 5 and 6. The first part of the hypothesis (that is pH affects enzymes) fails to reject because pH did affect enzyme …show more content…
One error that could have taken place was failure to wipe off the outside of the test tube before placing it in the spectrophotometer. Failure to do this would make all of the absorbance levels be higher than they actually are. This error could be especially detrimental when measuring the absorbance of the 4°C peroxidase solution. The condensation on the outside of the tube would make the absorbance seem abnormally high and leveled. This could make researches believe that this temperature is more optimal than other