Lab Report On Yeast Fermentation

This report address the process in which Yeast fermentation occurs best depending on the type of sugar used as a food source for yeast in order to ferment and create ethanol. In this experiment our group tested two different sugars, sucrose and stevia, The reason for testing Sucrose is due to the fact that it contains glucose and fructose in its molecular structure and in order for fermentation to occur glucose must be present in the production of ethanol and as a food source of yeast (Sugar). Stevia was chosen because of its complex structure and having no resemblance to glucose. Stevia is considered an artificial sweetener and its molecular orientation of atoms makes its shape longer as compared to glucose which is a bulky molecule. In addition,

Throughout this experiment, fermentation plays huge role because it will allow us to test which different sugar structures, sucrose and stevia are ideal as an energy source for yeast in order to ferment and break down to produce ethanol. If sucrose is favorable for yeast fermentation, the end product will be ethanol and none would be produced with stevia thus our hypothesis would be supported. If it turns out that stevia produces ethanol as the end product of fermentation, our hypothesis would be refuted since we stated that it would not be able to be broken down by the yeast due to its many ring structures in its molecular structure that contain strong covalent

Since there are great similarities in structures between glucose and sucrose some fermentation should occur from the glucose molecule within sucrose. We also hypothesize that stevia will not be ideal for yeast fermentation because its molecular structure is more complex as compared to glucose due to it having a much more glucose structures that contain more covalent bonds, which means that is more difficult to break down with heat. These two hypothesis arose after observing the difference in structure between sucrose, stevia, and glucose. Looking at the three different structures, we noticed that sucrose and glucose were fairly similar in structure, except that sucrose forms two rings and in its rings was the combination of glucose and fructose. Furthermore, glucose only has one ring and stevia contains six carbon rings in its structure, three glucose structures and one steviol core. In addition, both stevia and sucrose structures contain glucose, but since stevia contains two more glucose carbon rings and its steviol core, it is much more difficult to break down due to all the covalent bonds made up with in the