The hypothesis that amylase would no longer hydrolyse the starch solution into maltose past 37°C was not supported by the data.
Fig 1b, Fig 2.1 and Fig 2.2 all show the colour samples for various temperatures taken at increments of 10 seconds up to 40 seconds. Initially, 4°C was the slowest followed by 19°C then 37°C, 45°C, 80°C and 60°C being the fastest acting in the first 30 seconds. 80°C was the second-fastest acting temperature up until 20 seconds, but slowed down at the 30-second mark, allowing 37°C and 45°C to become higher ranked in the speed scale. This can be clearly seen at the 30 to 40 seconds increments on Fig 2.1 where the lines for 37°C and 45°C cross-over 80°C.
Fig 1a, Fig 1.1 and Fig 1.2 show samples …show more content…
The results from the experiment show that the temperature that had the fastest hydrolysis of starch to be 60°C. This is against the hypothesis and internet statistics. Fig 1.1 shows that by the 1-minute mark, there was no traces of starch in the starch-iodine solution sample on the colour tiles (scale of 13); all of the starch solution was hydrolysed in the first minute. At the time-0 mark, the starch-iodine solution was already at a scale of 8. This means that in the split second of time between adding the amylase to the starch solution and stirring it with the pipette to take a sample, the amylase had already hydrolysed the starch to the same degree it took the amylase at 4°C, 19°C and 80°C to hydrolyse in 4 minutes. The initial starch solution was not faulty as the control starch-iodine solution was identical to every other at the different degrees. Further refinement of the method should look into minimising the space between adding the amylase and withdrawing the time-0 sample. Looking at Fig 2.1, 60°C is shown to be the fastest acting out of the 6 temperatures, reaching a scale of 10 in the first 40 seconds, while as it took 80°C 3 minutes to reach scale 10 and 4°C and 19°C didn’t reach a colour scale of 10 in the full 4