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Chemistry Investigations

Could people please share their ideas for any chemistry investigation which should be of A Level standard.

I've thought up one which is about aspirin but does anyone know of any good ones....

:smile:

Reply 1

devilschild

Bilal786

A very easy one is with hydrogen peroxide and catalase from yeast and investigate rates of reaction by collecting oxygen in an inverted burette or syringe. Find order of reaction wrt catalase and H2O2 by varying each of their concentrations, investigate changing temperature and at what temperature the enzyme becomes denatured and you can calculate the activation energy using the arrhenius equation with the rates of reaction for the lower temperatures before the enzyme is denatured. You can also compare how much the enzyme catalyses the rate of reaction by comparing with another catalyst e.g. potassium iodide, could also establish order of reaction wrt this catalyst and calculate activation energy and compare this to the activation energy when catalase was used as the catalyst (you should find actE is much lower when catalase used). I think you may also have to compare the collection of oxygen method with another method and for this you can use the filter paper circle method- soak small filter paper circles cut out with a hole punch in the catalyst and put a certain volume H2O2 in a test tube, poke the filter paper circle to the bottom of the test tube and O2 should start forming around it, measure the time it takes for the circle to float to the surface. you can vary conc of H2O2 using this method and also do temperature and compare the results to those from collection of oxygen you should find filter paper circle method is much less reliable. I basically did this investigation for my A level coursework and wasn't too bad just very time consuming!