The Project
This lab was broken into three parts. For the first part of this lab, we made our own cheese with different curdling agents to determine which is the best for making cheese. For the second part, we repeated the same steps as the first part but changed one variable to see how it affected the process. Lastly, for the third part, we took our cheese and tested it to see which macromolecules were present in our cheese.
Lab Write Up
Content: Macromolecules
MONOSACCHARIDES
Any of the class of sugars (e.g., glucose) that cannot be hydrolyzed to give a simpler sugar. Monosaccharides are used as a primary energy source.
POLYSACCHARIDES
A carbohydrate (e.g., starch, cellulose, or glycogen) whose molecules consist of a number of sugar molecules bonded together. They act as energy storage.
CARBOHYDRATES
A carbohydrate is a molecular compounds made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
Lipids
Lipids are a group of molecules that include fats, oils and some steroids.
proteins
A protein is a molecule composed of polymers of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds.
Nucleic acids
Nucleic acids consist of either one or two long chains of repeating units called nucleotides, which consist of a nitrogen base (a purine or pyrimidine) attached to a sugar phosphate. The two main nucleic acids are DNA and RNA.
Reflection
This lab was very time consuming and different from all of our previous labs. One thing I liked about this lab was that it was separated into three parts. This made it easier for us to divide and organize our workload and concentrate on one thing at a time. Another thing that went well was that our group worked very well together, and everyone agreed on everything. One thing I could improve on is my leadership skills. I could do that by contributing more ideas and taking initiative. Another thing I could work on is being more productive. To achieve this, I could talk more on task and less off task. Overall, I learned a lot from this project and hope to use this knowledge in future projects.