Which part of the living system did you change?
Labs / Biology
Enzyme Kinetics
Substrate molecules bounce around a box while enzymes catch the ones that fit, convert them to product, and let go. Add more substrate and watch the reaction rate climb — then flatten out as every enzyme gets busy. That ceiling is Vmax, and the curve tracing it is Michaelis–Menten.
Labs / Biology / Enzyme Kinetics
Enzyme Kinetics
Substrate molecules bounce around a box while enzymes catch the ones that fit, convert them to product, and let go. Add more substrate and watch the reaction rate climb — then flatten out as every enzyme gets busy. That ceiling is Vmax, and the curve tracing it is Michaelis–Menten.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Living systems are connected and constantly changing. This model makes one biological process visible so you can test how its parts affect one another.
Explore
Try the model
v 0.0 /sVmax 0.0 /soccupied 0%Km 30
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Push substrate from Scarce to Flooded. Why does the rate stop rising even though you keep adding more substrate?
- At Flooded, what fraction of the enzymes are occupied? What is stopping the rate from going any higher?
- Double the enzyme count. Does Vmax double too — and what does that tell you about what sets the ceiling?
- Find the substrate level where the rate is about half of Vmax. How does that point compare to the Km readout?
- With only one enzyme, can you ever reach a high rate no matter how much substrate you add?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Explain the process as a chain: a change happens, the system responds, and that response affects what happens next. Use an observation from the model as evidence.
Check
Before you leave
How did the system respond?
How would you explain that response?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.