Enzyme Action (LabQuest)

A popular lab for general biology and a required activity for AP biology. In this experiment, you will measure the amount of oxygen produced when hydrogen peroxide is destroyed by an enzyme catalase.

To watch this movie, you mush have the most current Adobe Flash Player installed.

Learning Objectives

In this experiment, you will

Use an Oxygen Gas Sensor to measure the production of oxygen gas as hydrogen peroxide is destroyed by the enzyme catalase or peroxidase at various enzyme concentrations.
Measure and compare the initial rates of reaction for this enzyme when different concentrations of enzyme react with H₂O₂.
Measure the production of oxygen gas as hydrogen peroxide is destroyed by the enzyme catalase or peroxidase at various temperatures.
Measure and compare the initial rates of reaction for the enzyme at each temperature.
Measure the production of oxygen gas as hydrogen peroxide is destroyed by the enzyme catalase or peroxidase at various pH values.
Measure and compare the initial rates of reaction for the enzyme at each pH value.

Download an Evaluation Lab

The evaulation labs contain background information, objectives, materials list, and step-by-step student instructions.

Enzyme Action: Testing Catalase Activity Lab Book: Biology with Vernier

What Do I Need?
Standards Correlation
Related Videos

Biology with Vernier	Order Code: BWV	$48
Advanced Biology with Vernier	Order Code: BIO-A	$48
Gas Pressure Sensor	Order Code: GPS-BTA	$83
Vernier LabQuest	Order Code: LABQ	$329

National Science Education Standard Correlations

A.1.3.a Grades 5-8	The use of tools and techniques, including mathematics, will be guided by the question asked and the investigations students design. The use of computers for the collection, summary, and display of evidence is part of this standard. Students should be able to access, gather, store, retrieve, and organize data, using hardware and software designed for these purposes.
A.1.3.a Grades 5-8	The use of tools and techniques, including mathematics, will be guided by the question asked and the investigations students design. The use of computers for the collection, summary, and display of evidence is part of this standard. Students should be able to access, gather, store, retrieve, and organize data, using hardware and software designed for these purposes.
A.1.7.a Grades 5-8	With practice, students should become competent at communicating experimental methods, following instructions, describing observations, summarizing the results of other groups, and telling other students about investigations and explanations.
A.1.8.a Grades 5-8	Mathematics is essential to asking and answering questions about the natural world. Mathematics can be used to ask questions; to gather, organize, and present data; and to structure convincing explanations.
A.2.1 Grades 5-8	Different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of scientific investigations. Some investigations involve observing and describing objects, organisms, or events; some involve collecting specimens; some involve experiments; some involve seeking more information; some involve discovery of new objects and phenomena; and some involve making models.
A.2.4 Grades 5-8	Technology used to gather data enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigations.
B.2.1 Grades 5-8	The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion, and speed. That motion can be measured and represented on a graph.
E.2.3 Grades 5-8	Science and technology are reciprocal. Science helps drive technology, as it addresses questions that demand more sophisticated instruments and provides principles for better instrumentation and technique. Technology is essential to science, because it provides instruments and techniques that enable observations of objects and phenomena that are otherwise unobservable due to factors such as quantity, distance, location, size, and speed. Technology also provides tools for investigations, inquiry, and analysis.
G.2.1 Grades 5-8	Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Although all scientific ideas are tentative and subject to change and improvement in principle, for most major ideas in science, there is much experimental and observational confirmation. Those ideas are not likely to change greatly in the future. Scientists do and have changed their ideas about nature when they encounter new experimental evidence that does not match their existing explanations.

See All National and State Standard Correlations »