Lactase Reaction Rate

Experiment: Same glucose solution mixed with a different number of drops of lactase

Purpose: To see the effect an increased or decreased amount of concentration of lactase enzyme mixed with a dairy substance will affect the rate of production of glucose within a reaction

Hypothesis: If more lactase drops are added into the milk, then the greater amount of glucose is produced because more of the enzymes that break down lactose are working in larger amounts to produce different amounts of glucose.

Materials:

1. 5 Test Tubes
2. Test Tube Rack
3. Milk (2%)(60ml, 12ml per test tube)
4. Lactase Drops
5. 10 Glucose Strips
6. Graduated cylinder (50ml)

Procedure:

1. Prepare 5 test tubes with the required amount of milk (30 ml per test tube).
2. Prepare the lactase dropper and drop the required amount of milk into the test tubes except for one, this is your control tube
3. Test each solution with a glucose strip before adding any drops, and record information in data chart below.
4. According to the chart below, drop the required amount of lactase drops into the milk.
5. Make sure the solution is mixed well with the milk.
6. Wait 10 minutes before testing each test tube with the glucose strips.
7. Once it has been 10 minutes, place a glucose strip into each test tube wait 30 seconds, compare colour to chart below and record the data below.
8. Graph your data, [ ] of Glucose vs. # of Lactase drops, with # of Lactase drops on x-axis, and [ ] of Glucose on y-axis

Data/Observations:

Analysis/Conclusions:

When proceeding with this lab, from the data that we collected, one could see that as we added more lactase drops the rate and breakdown of the lactose into glucose increased and therefore can be said that they are directly related. This is seen due to adding more of one product, more of the other will breakdown. due to having a low volume of milk, the hypothesis that we created can’t fully support our findings because the results didn’t differ noticeably then expected. The more drops we added still resulted in the same colour as the test tubes with a smaller number of lactase drops. In generalization, with the more lactase drops a higher amount of glucose was found then its initial glucose level. In conclusion, the more lactase added to the milk changes the production of glucose within the milk substance.

1. How do you think you could improve this experiment for the most accurate outcome?

A thing that we could have done to make this lab more effective is, changing the volume of the amount of milk used to a greater amount. Changing the volume would have resulted in a more noticeable difference in the glucose levels compared to each test tube. This is due to the concentration of the lactase drops to milk being lower than what they were in this experiment, making a visible change in the differences within the colour indicator scale.