Catalase enzyme

The purpose of this lab was to measure the rate of the reaction from the catalase enzyme and hydrogen peroxide from the number of enzymes we used to speed up the reaction. Because enzymes are things that speed up reactions, we test the use of it by using hydrogen peroxide. The formula is 2*H2O2-> 2h2O +O2. This means changing hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen. So we're testing how much oxygen gets released in the limited amount of time.

We hypothesize that the more enzymes we put into the solution the faster the reaction will be and the more time passes by, the reaction rate will slow down, so in the beginning it will react fastest and after it will slow.

Here is our procedure and materials.

Materials: (per team of 2) 2 pairs safety goggles

2 lab aprons

50 mL beaker

10 mL and 50 mL graduated cylinder Test tubes

Fresh 3% H2O2

forceps                   

Water pan

Test tube rack Catalase solution               

Thermometer

Filter Paper

Paper punches

Catalase

Reaction chambers (Drosophila vials with 1- hole stoppers                   

Stop watch Ice                   

Also needed to prep lab: liver, cheesecloth, blender

                   

Procedure:

1. Prepare a table in your data book similar to Table 1.

2. Obtain a small amount of stock catalase solution in a 50-ml beaker

3. Obtain a reaction chamber and a number of filter-paper disks.

4. Place four catalase-soaked filter paper disks high on one interior sidewall of the reaction chamber. (They will stick to the sidewall.) Prepare a disk for use in the reaction chamber by holding it by its edge with a pair of forceps and dipping it into the stock catalase solution for a few seconds. Drain the disk against the sidewall of the beaker before you transfer it to the reaction chamber. CAUTION: Forceps are sharp. Handle with care.

5.Stand the reaction chamber upright and carefully add 10 mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide solution. Do not allow the peroxide to touch the filter paper disks.

6. Tightly stopper the chamber.

7. Fill a pan almost full with water.

8.Lay the 50-mL graduated cylinder on its side in the pan so that it fills with water completely. If any air bubbles are present, carefully work these out by tilting the cylinder slightly while keeping it underwater. Turn the cylinder upside down into an upright position keeping its mouth underwater at all times.

9.Carefully place the reaction chamber and its contents on its side in the pan of water. Make certain that the side with the disks faces upward.                           

10. Move the graduated cylinder into a position so that its mouth comes to lie directly over the tip of the dropping pipet. One member of the team should hold it in this position for the duration of the experiment.                   

11. Rotate the reaction chamber 180o on its side so that the hydrogen peroxide solution comes into contact with the catalase-soaked disks.                   

12. Measure the gas levels in the graduated cylinder at 30-second intervals for 10-now 5 minutes. Record the levels in your data table.

Here are our results:

And here is the graph:

After we finished the experiment, we concluded the following results: The first thirty seconds, there is a big increase of rate of reaction, after which it slowed down. After 5 minutes, it sometimes slowed down the reaction, but the differences were very minute. Therefore, i believe that if we had an hour more so we could have gone with the whole experiment instead of cutting it in half, there would have been much more significant differences. The greater amount of dots, the faster the rate of the reaction, however, three and 4 dots were about the same rate, so we would like to try having more dots to confirm this limit(maybe).

Analysis:

1. We have drawn the graph in our results.

As the time progresses, the rate of the enzymatic reaction goes down a little bit. Although the differences are subtle, the graph of 4 dots showed that in the first thirty seconds it bursts at 2.5 ml of oxygen but then it only went one more milliliter in the next, and then it started being stagnant at the rate of about 0.5 ml per second. Because of this, we should test it with ten minutes to detect the later changes toward the end. For all we know, it could stop by ten minutes.

2. (Graph is above)

The enzyme activity tends to be more as concentration increases which makes the reaction faster. My graph shows that as we increased the number of dots in the reaction, the rate of the reaction and amount of oxygen produced increased. For example, with 1 dot it ends at 2.7 ml while 2 dots ends at 6.4 ml. Three and four dots both ended at 7 ml though, so we should test more to see if there is a maximum amount of enzymes that can be active at one time. We should try more than four dots and also more time because at the end, 3 dots slowed down a little.

3,4,5. We did not do part b and c

Relative time

In many sources, we have seen space-time curvature, such as Palkia and Dialga in Pokemon, Kronos in Percy Jackson, and the like. But of course, the most understandable and reasonable one is without a doubt Interstellar. Relativity is the curve of space-time around gravity. That of course is the general relativity. There is also special relativity, but that has almost nothing to do with the movie, so let's just discuss the topic of general relativity. General relativity is the combination of special type and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and it provides a way we can see gravity and space-time using geometric solutions. The most important part of this is the black hole, which is a mass of pure gravitational force, in other words, just a big chunk of mass compressed into a small space. Even though it has mass, it still has the same gravitational force, so even if the sun was a black hole, the planets would still revolve around it, but it would be the size of a basketball. Considering that, since a smallest actual black hole is many thousands of times bigger than the sun, the gravitational force would be so strong that it could bend space-time curvature. For example, the curvature of the solar system would be small.

 However, the space time curvature of the black hole is so strong that it looks something like a vortex:

And that central point, my friends, is the singularity.  As soon as you step into the curve, time slows as you get closer to the center. Finally, at a point call the event horizon, you will be lost forever. Not that you will actually be lost, but you will be moving so slow, that everything around you will be lost to time. In the movie, they showed that even though Cooper and Amelia had only been on Miller's planet for a few hours, their companion on board the Endurance had aged 24 years and 2 months because the planet was so close to the black hole. Also on that planet Miller had simply been killed minutes before they arrived, but they had been getting signals from him for decades because of the time-space interference of the Gargantua. Also in the movie, it showed that he aged slower in the black hole as about 60 years had passed since he entered it. One question I have about this question of general relativity in the movie is that he only aged 60 years after crossing the event horizon, considering that he spent at least a minute in there, shouldn't it have been around a few billion years? It may have been caused because he traveled back in time during his interaction with the 5 dimensional beings, but wouldn't he have to be there before the creation of Gargantua for the time he takes to get out of the black hole(since it is also dilated making it a few billion years)and near Saturn? Also we discussed spaghettification. His future self may have saved him, but the ship should have been destroyed by pulling apart, not by getting hit by numerous beams of light particles, and wouldn't it have been too late for him to not get spagghetified?

Anyway, it was a great movie that gave me lots of ideas and question. GO BELLS!

Dyalisis Diffusion

The purpose of this lab was to recreate and observe diffusion using goat intestin...*ahem* dialysis tubing and the substances that move in and out of the membrane of the cell . We filled a dialysis tube with a starch solution and dunked it into a solution that we dyed orange.

We redid this whole experiment with glucose instead of starch. After 20 minutes, we pulled the first dialysis tube out of the colored water and saw that the color of the startch solution in the tube had changed to blueish black color. Then we dipped an rapidly inflating(5000x inflation) glucose test strip that Mr. Wong bought for 10/3 of a dollar for each strip into the glucose solution beaker and discovered that it had changed to a different color than before.

We used two beakers, iodine and dropping pipette, dialysis tubing, Glucose test strips, distilled water, a starch solution, and a glucose solution.

Twist one end of a piece of dialysis tubing. Fold the twisted end over, and tie it tightly with a piece of string. Prepare the other piece the same way.

Pour soluble -starch solution to within 4 cm the top of one piece of tubing. Twist and tie the end as in step 1. Rinse the tubing under running water to remove any starch fro the outside. 

Place the tubing in a cup of water labeled A. Pour enough Lugol’s iodine solution to give the water a distinct yellowish color. 

Repeat step 2 with the second piece of dialysis tubing, using glucose solution instead of the soluble starch. Place this tubing in a beaker of water labeled B.

Allow the pieces of tubing to stand for about 20 minutes. Dip a glucose test strip into the water in beaker B. Record the color on the strip.

Observe the tubing in beakerA. Record any changes, including color, that you see in either the tubing or the water in the beaker.

Let beakers A and B stand overnight.Record any changes observed the next day. 

In the starch experiment, the iodine molecules from the in beaker A moved to the starch solution inside, turning the starch solution blue. This is because of osmosis, which allows it to travel from greater concentration to smaller concentration. In the glucose experiment, the glucose molecules moved from the inside to the outside as we tested using the glucose test strip that proved that the concentration outside was greater than before. We did not stay overnight and therefore, I cannot answer analysis 3. The starch molecules couldn't pass through because it was too large. If the iodine molecules are small, and the glucose molecules are smaller than starch, both of these molecules would have been able to diffuse. The structure probably contains pores which allow for the diffusion.

In conclusion, I learned that membranes are very complex structures and they can let small molecules like water and iodine in and also,glucose but not big molecules like starch.