Factors that affect enzymes

• Enzymes are necessary for chemical reactions and their functioning can be affected by temperature and pH.
• The rate of an enzyme-controlled reaction changes with temperature, increasing as temperature increases but dropping rapidly after about 37 degrees due to the high temperatures breaking some of the bonds holding the enzymes together and changing the active site shape.
• The optimum temperature of an enzyme is the temperature at which the rate peaks, which for the human body is generally around 37 degrees.
• Different enzymes can have different optimum temperatures.
• pH is a measure of acidity and if the pH is too high or too low it can lower the rate of the reaction because the enzymes' bonds start to break, causing the active site to change shape.
• The optimal pH for an enzyme depends on where it normally works, for example, most enzymes in our body work best at neutral pHs or around seven, while the enzymes that work in the stomach have an optimal pH of around 2 because that's the rough pH of the stomach.
• To calculate the rate of a chemical reaction, we need to know how much a certain reactant or product changes by and the time it took to change, then divide the change in reactant to a product by the time.