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How Does Sugar Affect Fermentation

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The purpose of this investigation was to determine how the concentration of sugar affects fermentation. Table 2 and figure 2 show that the rate of fermentation; the amount of carbon dioxide produced, decreased as the concentration of the glucose solution changed from 10% to 30%. This is because if the glucose level increases over the optimum amount for catalase, the osmotic concentration is too high for the yeast to absorb water. A large portion of yeast (the catalyst) is made up of water; therefore, it is needed to undertake fermentation effectively. Due to the water potential of glucose decreasing below the water potential of yeast cells, yeast is losing water as it moves out of its cell (Hewitson, J. 2015). The 10% glucose solution had …show more content…

Table 3 and figure 3 reflect that a greater amount of carbon dioxide was produced as the duration of the investigation increased. This can be explained as the reaction required a specific activation energy to begin the reaction, which was lowered by the catalyst of yeast. Once the reactants were thoroughly combined by shaking the test tubes, the production of ethanol and carbon dioxide occurred faster. From the results in table 3, it is evident that the greatest difference of carbon dioxide created between the 10%, 20%, and 30% solutions is 1.7mL. These values vary due to the presence of random and systematic errors which will be discussed later in the report. Group 1 had the greatest production of CO2 from all of the groups; this may be due to a different water bath temperature or a greater amount of yeast than the other groups. This method is suitable as it displays how time and various glucose solutions affect the rate of fermentation, without needing elaborate amounts of …show more content…

By repeating the experiment, systematic and random errors can be reduced by altering the instruments used to increase the accuracy of the data collected. To further our knowledge on what can affect the rate of fermentation; multiple types of sugars could have been tested in comparison with the various concentrations of glucose. Using rubber stoppers would improve on the current method as small amounts of solution started to leak out of the test tube. Additionally, the combined solutions of glucose and yeast needed to be shaken vigorously to initiate the reaction, which was discovered 10 minutes into the investigation. To reduce the duration of the experiment, this could be done at the beginning, instead of inverting the glassware. The effect of random errors was reduced by using a line of best fit on graphs. Using volumetric pipettes would further improve the accuracy of the volumes measured as it has the ability to record to 0.01

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