Disccusion When the concentration of hydrogen peroxide is increased, the rate of reaction increases at a directly proportional rate until

the solution becomes saturated with the substrate hydrogen peroxide. At low hydrogen peroxide concentrations, that is 0.5 mol dm-3 , few substrate molecules are present. As such, there are many active sites which are available. Therefore, the rate of reaction increases in direct proportional to the substrate concentration. An increase in hydrogen peroxide concentration means more substrate molecules are available. This means there are more chance of collision between the substrate molecules and enzyme molecules for a catalytic reaction to take place. As more substrate molecules fill the active sites, more products are formed per unit time. Therefore, the number of gas bubbles released by hydrogen peroxide increases as the concentration of hydrogen peroxide increases from 1.0 mol dm-3 to 2.0 mol dm-3 . At high substrate concentration, that is 2.0 mol dm-3 of H2O2 solution, the number of gas bubbles released per minute is the highest. This is because more substrate molecules bind to the active site of the enzyme catalase and more products, that is oxygen gas can be produced. The increase in substrate concentration will only lead to an increase in the rate of reaction if there are enough enzyme molecules which are available to catalyse the additional substrate molecules. However, there is a limit to how the rate of a reaction can be further increased by adding more substrate molecules to a fixed concentration of an enzyme. At a certain substrate concentration, the rate of reaction will not increase further and become constant, the reaction is at a maximum rate. At this point, all active sites are filled and

engaged in catalysis. The enzyme molecules are said to be saturated. As soon as the products leaves an active site, another substrate molecule enters the active site. If you double the concentration of hydrogen peroxide then the rate of reaction doubles as well. When the concentration is doubled from 0.5 mol dm-3 to 1.0 mol dm-3 ,the rate goes up from 23 to 34 number of bubbles released per minute, which is an increase of 1.5 times, that is approximately 2 times. The number of gas bubbles released per minute increase two times if the hydrogen peroxide concentration is increased two times because there are twice as many substrate molecules which can join onto the enzymes active sites. During the experiment, we must avoid shaking the boiling tube because it may affect the number of gas bubbles released and the readings may not be accurate. Besides, it is important for us to repeat the experiment 3 times to get the average readings of the experiment.