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March 29, 2024, 06:46:06 am

Author Topic: Experiment Help and Advice Please!  (Read 3595 times)

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mayellie101

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Experiment Help and Advice Please!
« on: June 02, 2020, 11:22:41 pm »
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Hi guys! I have been working on an experiment investigating enzyme activities and the factors which influence it. I have to hand in an evaluation this week and my results did not really adhere to my previous research. I changed the concentration of the enzyme in the experiment, and I thought (as well as the teachers) the reaction would speed up, but it didn't make any difference.
If anyone had any advice or thoughts as to why this happened, I would greatly appreciate it  ;)
Also, I repeated the trials five times under teacher supervision so it was not human error. Currently, I am thinking there was not enough substrate to bind to, but if anyone could help please do!
Thank you
- May  8) :)

Bri MT

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Re: Experiment Help and Advice Please!
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2020, 08:51:25 am »
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Hi!

Welcome to the forums :)

That sounds like good thinking to me! Just make sure you word it more specifically when explaining your results (e.g. "the substrate was saturated with enzymes..." ) Are you able to plot reaction rate vs time at all? If you can, it would be good to see if you get the characteristic curve we'd expect for that scenario.

To be safe, I recommend you try to use the term "mistake" rather than "error" since error can be used to mean uncertainty.


Hope this helps!

K.Smithy

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Re: Experiment Help and Advice Please!
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2020, 02:30:31 pm »
+1
Hi guys! I have been working on an experiment investigating enzyme activities and the factors which influence it. I have to hand in an evaluation this week and my results did not really adhere to my previous research. I changed the concentration of the enzyme in the experiment, and I thought (as well as the teachers) the reaction would speed up, but it didn't make any difference.
If anyone had any advice or thoughts as to why this happened, I would greatly appreciate it  ;)
Also, I repeated the trials five times under teacher supervision so it was not human error. Currently, I am thinking there was not enough substrate to bind to, but if anyone could help please do!
Thank you
- May  8) :)

Hi! :)
What is your exact methodology for the experiment? Are you using potatoes for the enzymes? Was there potential for temperature to denature the enzymes?.... etc.
There are so many factors that go into student experiments - especially when looking at enzymes.
I might be able to help out a bit more if I knew your full methodology (I also looked at enzymes last year) :)

Hope all is going well!
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Bri MT

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Re: Experiment Help and Advice Please!
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2020, 03:55:30 pm »
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Hi! :)
What is your exact methodology for the experiment? Are you using potatoes for the enzymes? Was there potential for temperature to denature the enzymes?.... etc.
There are so many factors that go into student experiments - especially when looking at enzymes.
I might be able to help out a bit more if I knew your full methodology (I also looked at enzymes last year) :)

Hope all is going well!

Good points!

I would hope that the teachers would've picked at enzyme that doesn't denature at room temp, had sufficient variation in enzyme concentration for effect size to be detectable etc. but it's certainly not a bad idea to check & these are worth considering for the discussion as well. :)