Enzyme Lab Report

Matt Miller, Period 5

Introduction

 Nathan, Teo, and I wanted to test how PH levels affect enzymes of plants. To do this, we used 10 test tubes, five for each trial, and did the test twice to confirm our first results.

Purpose

The purpose of our experiment was to see if different acid solutions reacted to enzymes differently.

Hypothesis

Our hypothesis was that the solution with the highest PH levels, in this case, PH 12 Na OH, would cause the enzymes to react the most.

Methods

Materials:

5 to 10 grams of freshly picked bindweed

Mortar and pestle

Water

3 100-liter glass or plastic beakers

1 mL syringe

Hydrogen peroxide

1 Paper towel square (for filtration)

Glass test tubes

Test tube rack or holder

Small plastic ruler

Safety glasses

PH 2-3 HC1 solution

PH 4 HC1 solution

PH 7 Water solution

PH 10 Na OH solution

PH 12 Na OH solution

Procedure:

First, we went and picked some bindweed from the WGHS garden. Then, we used a mortar and pestle to grind up the bindweed, and added a few drops of water into the solution, making the ground up bindweed moist. Then, we put the moist, ground up bindweed onto a paper towel, put the paper towel over a beaker, and squeezed the bindweed extract so it would drip through the paper towel and into the beaker. Next, we put the five acid solutions into each small test tube, and then into the test tube rack. We added 2 ml of hydrogen peroxide into each test tube, then filled a syringe with the enzyme solution, and put that in as well. Every two seconds, for 30 seconds, we recorded what the level of the mixture was at in cm. When 30 seconds was over, we went over our results, and started the process again. After the first trial, we did the whole experiment to see if we got the same results a second time.

Results and Data:

*On the spreadsheet below*

In conclusion, our hypothesis was wrong. It turns out that the higher the PH levels were, didn’t really affect the enzyme’s reaction at all. The solution with the most reaction was PH 7 Water. This was the only of the five solutions tested with water, so we have to conclude that water has the biggest effect on the bindweed enzymes.

Conclusion

One thing that might have gone wrong in the experiment was timing. We didn’t have the best system to alert our teammates when to record the reaction of the enzymes and solutions. We had a person reading the reactions, another person calling out every two seconds to notify us to record, and a third person to do the actual recording of the data. It would have been much more accurate if there was a timer or stopwatch that automatically signal us exactly every two seconds. Also, we could have been more accurate in measuring the right amount of hydrogen peroxide. We also could’ve been neater while conducting the experiment; we spilled multiple times along the way.

One question I had during this whole experiment was: What if there was more acids that included water, since the most reactive acid had water in it. Another question I had was: Instead of recording data every 2 seconds, what if we recorded every second, or every five seconds, or any other time. It wouldn’t change the preparation for the experiment at all, just the data would look a little different.