Question

You have just completed assaying the change in absorbance for an enzyme. The initial absorbance was 0.022; the absorbance after 5 minutes was 0.444. Calculate the rate of enzyme activity for this sample (as increase in A per 10 minutes). Show your work. What is a RATE and name some RATES that you commonly encounter.

Answer 1

Answer:

The answer is 0.844/10 minutes

Explanation:

You have an enzyme that catalizes a reaction which gives a product that can be quantified by an absorbance measurement. The more reaction time, the more product quantity and higher absorbance.

The rate of the reaction is the change in products quantity per time unit. As you are using the absorbance as a measure of the product quantity, you can calculate the rate as the change in absorbance (ΔA) per time (in minutes) as follows:

rate= ΔA/time

rate= (final absorbance - initial absorbance) /minutes

rate= (0.444-0.022)/5 min

rate= 0.422/5 min

In 10 minutes will be :

rate= 0.844/10 min

Commonly, a rate is the relation between two quantities measured in different units. For example, the speed of a car is the change in meters (traveled distance) per time (m/s or km/h). For an enzyme, is the same (quantity of product/time).