Cheese Lab

In this lab we asked the question, “What are the optimal conditions and curdling agents for making cheese?” We found that chymosin was the best curdling agent because it curdled in almost every condition and it curdled faster than the the rennin and buttermilk. The milk curdled within the first five minutes in acidic condition with chymosin, probably earlier, as well as in the hot condition. Since milk in general, curdles faster in warm conditions with low pH, chymosin curdles very fast in warm and acidic conditions. The buttermilk didn’t curdle in anything except the acidic condition. Buttermilk was an agent that didn’t help lower the activation energy that much.

While the data supports the claim, there could have been possible errors due to the temperature in everyone’s armpits and possibly destroying curdles while checking for them. An error that could have caused the results to be inaccurate would be that the temperature in everyone’s armpits are most likely not all the same so some may have curdled faster or slower than others. Another reason for why there could have been an error was that curdles could have been disturbed and may have been destroyed when checking for curdles. Some people may have not been careful when they checked for curdles. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend that everyone should be really careful when checking for any curdles and that there should be some other way to make sure the temperature is the same for all the agents.

The purpose of this lab was to expand our knowledge on enzymes, substrates, and activation energy by experimenting with curdling cheese. In this lab, I learned that there are some enzymes that lower the activation energy more than others and that milk curdles the fastest in warm and acidic conditions which helped me understand the concept of how energy is used in reactions and what changes the activation energy. Based on my experience from this lab, I could use the knowledge of activation energy and enzymes if I need to get a faster reaction in anything. If I ever want to make my own cheese, then I’ll use chymosin and make it in a warm environment.

	Time to Curdle (minutes)
Curdling Agent	Chymosin	Rennin	Buttermilk	Milk (control)
Acid	5	5	5
Base	20
pH control	15	10
Cold
Hot	5	5
Temp control	10	10