catalysts

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From: Monya Baker (monya_baker@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 09:33:05 PDT 

Message-ID: <20031017163305.91418.qmail@web21106.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 09:33:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Monya Baker <monya_baker@yahoo.com>
Subject: catalysts

 Hi Geoff,

 

You’re right. Enzymes are around in teeny concentrations and so have no ability to sequester reactants. So if there was a way for a reaction to happen faster, it would.

The other teacher is probably thinking that reactions in our bodies that extract energy from food are slower and more efficient than the reactions that directly burn the food (i.e. converting the carbon containing molecules directly to water and carbon dioxide in flames is faster than diverting it through glycolysis and the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain in cells).

 

Each individual enzyme-aided reaction happens faster than it would without the catalyst. You could avoid all the complicated carbon shuffling and burn sugar faster with fire; the initial flame supplies activation energy for reactions that release energy that activates other reactions. But even if the final chemical equation is the same (carbon-based molecules going to water and carbon dioxide) the routes are completely different and can’t be compared the same way.

 

The idea of a catalyst raising the activation energy is, I think, just plain wrong.

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