Capsicum enzyme prac

[bindibadgi]

Hi everyone,

thanks to the legendary Sassi's enzyme prac using capsicum I can officially say our labs won't stink of liver ever again!
They'll stink of other things of course (anyone for agar plates? ) but it won't be liver!
I did a run through of the prac today & it works a treat, so I thought I'd say thanks, & also share a couple of things I found out after fiddling around with it.
The set up used 7 x 50mL measuring cylinders, & standard 20vol/6% H2O2, 6mL each of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6% H2O2 going into them.
I added 3mL of the capsicum extract one at a time & got the following mL of foam after 1 minute:
0% = 0mL
1% = 18mL
2% = 20mL
3% = 34mL
4% = 38mL
5% = 40mL
6% = 52mL
I tried a couple of times & these were the best results, because it seemed to work best by using cold H2O2 straight out of the fridge & cold water as well for the dilutions which is odd. The first run through I did used a new bottle of H2O2 that I left out on the bench to come to room temp, but that didn't work as well. I thought enzyme pracs worked best at room temp or body temp, but cold seemed to do the trick for the capsicum.
Also, I found that you get a bunch more capsicum extract if you take the pulp out of the sieve after filtering it & squeeze it through muslin. More bang for your capsicum buck

I'm very pleased to be a newbie member of such an awesome portal, & I hope I can return the favour by posting some of our successful recipes etc, as well as really bad jokes, down the track

Cheers,

[bindibadgi]

Uuuumm.......confession time......since my post about the capsicum prac it only just occurred to me that capsicum is not warm blooded & therefore the enzyme function will be just fine at cold temperatures. Massive D'oh!!
Serious case of brain cramp today I think!

[fibreweb]

I spent this afternon playing with the capsicums in the hope to try and get my teachers to use that instead of liver, or junket this year. A whole lot easier to clean up and a lot cheaper then junket powder and more than 10 litres of milk!

They test the enzymes in different concentrations, at different temperatures and at different pH levels.

The capsicum came up trumps each time. I noted with interest that there was more froth when the capsicum/H2O2 was in a cold bath compared to room temp, which was more than the one in the hot water bath.

I also added 1 ml of HCl 1M, 0.1M and 0.01M and NaOH at the same concentrations to 5 separate test tubes, also having a control and using 2 ml H2O2 in each. The was a good range of reactions with nothing happening both the most concentrated solutions.

Now I will do it again, probably sports afternoon again next week, this time tabulating the results so I have concrete evidence to support my request.

Thanks to Sassi for putting me onto this.

Wendy