Acid Lab

This lab allowed us to understand the digestion process. Also the chemicals involved with digestion. When hydrochloric acid stands by itself very little happens. It takes longer for the egg white to get mushy and break down chemically. The enzyme or the pepsin does the same. It would take longer for the enzyme to break down the food by itself. In this case the food was the egg white. These by itself makes digesting food a slow process and could take twice as long.

Together the pepsin or the enzyme combined with the hydrochloric acid speeds up the reaction. The enzyme speeds up the reaction. When together the breaking down of the chemicals gets cut in half then if the acid or the enzyme was by itself. In the body the enzyme would be the saliva . The enzyme mixes in the mouth. After the mouth the saliva and food goes into the stomach and mixes with the hydrochloric acid and these two make digestion go quicker. We learned this in the lab. I found that the pepsin and the hydrochloric acid were the only ones to start to break down the egg whites. We concluded that since the enzyme speeds up chemical reactions and did break down food, that if it mixed with the hydrochloric acid the reaction would speed up. The conclusion was correct and did work. This lab helped me understand the digestion system and how it works.