When grocery shopping in today’s society, you always see packages saying “low fat”, “no saturated fats” or something along that nature. Have you ever really thought about what that literally meant? It actually goes all the way down to the molecular structure of the substance. There are several different classifications of biomolecules that make up all the living things in this world. One of these classes is lipids, it is the only class that does not consist of polymers. There are three subcategories of lipids: triglycerides (fats), phospholipids, and steroids. All lipids share the same characteristic of being hydrophobic. Because they are hydrophobic, they separate from water and this makes it easy to test if a substance is made of lipids or not. In this experiment, we used ethanol to test …show more content…
We researched about lipids, their properties, and where they are usually found to begin our experiment. The materials used for testing water, butter, vegetable oil, olive oil, salad dressing, egg beaters, lemon juice, skim milk, 7UP, and margarine. The testing agents were ethanol and Sudan IV solution. Secondly, we created a testable hypothesis. The butter, vegetable oil, olive oil, salad dressing, and margarine all will contain lipids.
The first step of the experiment was getting small samples of each substance used. Then we put four mL of ethanol into ten separate test tubes. We proceeded by using a pipette to put one mL of each sample into each test tube. The mixtures were then covered with Parafilm and slowly inverted several to hydrolyze the lipids. Afterwards, the specimen is decanted into a new test tube and