Enzyme Experiments and

the Scientific Method

Pages 34-35

• Understand how enzymes work as biochemical

catalysts
• Understand and apply scientific method
 What is the Scientific Method?
• When scientists have an issue, they address it with the scientific methods which has several components
• Observation: what we can see, e.g. a patient infected with a bacterial infection isn’t getting better with antibiotics
• Hypothesis: usually a if-then statement. E.g. if the patient isn’t recovering from the bacterial infection then the bacteria
causing the disease may be resistant to this specific antibiotic
• Predictions: changing the type of antibiotic may cause the person to get better.
• Data collection: results of the experiment are analysed, e.g. patient recovered, to improve reliabililty, same experiment
needs to be conducted on different patients with the same bacterial infection
• Conclusion: conclusions will allow research to either accept / reject original hypthosis, e.g. patient was treated with
broad spectrum antibiotic not previously used to treat this strain of bacteria thus the patient recovered in a period of 3
days
 Illustration of the Scientific Method

Apparatus is used to measure the effects of changing one factor

(variable 1) on the value of a second factor (variable 2)

to clarify the scientific method, we will (virtually conduct an

experiment on the activity of catalase)
 Temperature Affects Catalase
Activity
• Catalase is an intracellular enzyme that catalyses the breakdown of
hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)

• Catalase is present in potatoes, small slices of potatoes are placed in H 2O2

solution
• The water and oxygen gas produced will pass into a manometer
• The changing levels in the manometer shows how much oxygen gas is
produced and gives a measure of the activity of catalase.
• The experiment is conducted at different temperatures.
Temperature Affects Catalase
Activity
• Controls are set up in which the input variable (temperature) is not changed to
make sure that the temperature is causing the changes not a different variable
• Why is a control important in experimentation?
• To ensure that the experiment is a fair test and the data collected is valid.

• If scientist expects that errors have been made, experiment needs to be repeated
• Multiple results for the same experiment give more accurate results.
 Dealing with Data:
Recording Results
• Raw data are collected in a table initially then displayed as a graph to allow the
scientist to draw conclusions
• When collecting information you must not leave blanks, for missing values use (-)
and (0) for zero

Temperature / ºC Time taken to Rate of oxgen

produce 5cm3 of production per cm3
oxygen / s per s
20.00

30.00
 Drawing a Graph

A graph is a visual
representation of data
that makes a
relationship more
obvious
 Evaluating an Experiment

• When a scientist looks back at the results of their experiment, this is referred to as
evaluation, and is done to collect results
• Why do scientists need to evaluate?
• To make sure the techniques used and the apparatuses used have provided
the most reliable results