The Effect Of Substrate Concentration On The Activity Of The Enzyme Catalase
A Level Biology Project
Aims
This is an experiment to examine how the concentration of the substrate hydrogen peroxide affects the rate of reaction of the enzyme catalase.
Background Information
Enzymes such as Catalase are protein molecules which are found in living cells. They are used to speed up specific reactions in the cells. They are all very specific as each enzyme just performs one particular reaction.
Catalase is an enzyme found in food such as potato and liver. It is used for removing Hydrogen Peroxide from the cells. Hydrogen Peroxide is the poisonous by-product of metabolism. Catalase speeds up the decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide into water …show more content…
The average results are all written down to one decimal place because although the stopwatch gives results to two decimal places it is impossible to get accurate times to two decimal places due to the fact that our reaction times are not fast enough to stop the stopwatch precisely. I then worked out the rates of the reactions with the equation
Rate=30/Average Time
From these rates I was able to plot a graph of the rate of reaction against concentration of Hydrogen Peroxide. Interpretation
When the concentration of Hydrogen Peroxide is increased, the rate of reaction increases at a directly proportional rate until the concentration of Hydrogen Peroxide reaches about 16%. If you double the concentration of Hydrogen Peroxide then the rate of reaction doubles as well. When the concentration is doubled from 8-16% the rate goes up from 1.65-2.97 Cm3 Oxygen produced per second, which is an increase of 1.8 times. I would expect the rate to increase two times if the Hydrogen Peroxide concentration is increased two times because there are twice as many substrate molecules which can join onto the enzymes active sites. The reason that