Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am doing: Sucrose & Glucose & Fructose, Oh My! Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food and I cannot figure how to determine/calculate the original sucrose concentration and/or the percent of sucrose converted! HELP!!!! This is due TOMORROW!

Hi s_khurjekar17,

Sucrose & Glucose & Fructose, Oh My! Uncovering Hidden Sugar in Your Food is a great project. So you started the experiment with a 10% sucrose solution (6 g sucrose / 60 ml water), but it might be easier to think about it as a decimal (0.10).

If you change your concentrations of sugars to decimals and then use the equation below it might make more sense.

Original sucrose concentration × Glucose concentration at linear time point = Percentage of sucrose converted

Good luck,
Emily

Thank you, but I still have one question, about how much is a normal amount of original sucrose concentration for a liquid just to give an estimate? And also, to find out the percentage of sucrose converted, do you just do the reading after invertase subtracted by the reading before invertase?

Thanks Emily

Hi s_khurjekar17,

It sounds like you are on the right track. If you know the concentration of glucose before and after adding intertase, than you should be able to rearrange the equation and get the original sucrose concentration.

Cheers,
Emily

But what is the amount of sucrose converted then?