Jolyn's Blog for Hotdawgs

This unit was about the essential knowledge in chemistry. From learning about atoms to enzymes, we have learned about their functions and structures. One of the main points we touched upon was the big four macromolecules: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. Carbohydrates are saccharides, also commonly known as sugar, that are made of rings of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. It's used as energy storage for producers and a main source of energy for consumers. Lipids are molecules that have fat, phospholipids, oils, waves and cholesterol. They contain chains of fatty acids, carbon and hydrogen, and are nonpolar. It's also used as energy storage, but also makes up cell membranes and used to make hormones. Protein is large molecules made of amino acids chained together. This can support the body, speed up chemical reactions, help cells communicate, and let things through the cell membrane. One type of protein is enzymes. Enzymes are amino acids chained together, which ...

We tried to answered how does the structure of a carbohydrates affect its taste (sweetness). The structures include monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. I think that the less rings the sugar has, the more sweetness it has. That would mean that monosaccharides would be the sweetest carbohydrate and polysaccharides would not be sweet to eat. Our group had hypothesized that sucrose, glucose, fructose, and lactose would taste sweet, while galactose, maltose, starch, and cellulose would not taste sweet. We tried the different types of carbohydrates and I concluded that starch and cellulose were polysaccharides due to its unpleasant taste. Then we tried fructose, which was cloyingly sweet. From this evidence, monosaccharides are the sweetest, disaccharides would rank number two, and leaving polysaccharides in last place regarding sweetest. As I stated, the less rings the sugar has, the sweeter it would taste. The more rings these carbohydrates have means that it would be mo...

Our experiment had a normal result. In this lab, we asked the question, "What concentration of bleach is best to fade the color out of the new denim material in 10 minutes without visible damage to the fabric?" We found that the best concentration is 50% concentrate. The amounts of color removal was decreasing with the amount of concentration. We did have an issue with the fabric damage. The average should have a smooth decrease, but there was a hiccup from 100% to 50%. Like stated before, there should have been a smooth decrease, but instead there was a hiccup in the average. The 50% concentration had worse fabric damage than 100%. There were holes in the fabric that might have been due to the bleach. In future experiments, I would recommend to have even pieces of fabric that had no damage in the beginning to avoid the problem of having the fabric damage data impacted. This lab was done to demonstrate the best amount of bleach used in jeans without visible damage to the ...