Sweet Aunt Jemima: The Effect of Different Sugars on CO2 Production in Yeast

Abstract

Baker’s yeast is a diverse organism that has many applications to human life. It is essential for bread products, alcoholic beverages, and biofuels. We set out to see if we could maximize the carbon dioxide production of baker’s yeast by testing different types of sugar in solution, specifically sucrose and corn syrup. We hypothesized that if we add sucrose to a yeast solution, then the yeast will grow better than with corn syrup because the sucrose is a more concentrated sugar. In the experiment, we compared a yeast solution with sucrose to a yeast solution with corn syrup and measured the carbon dioxide output over three trials. Our results showed that the solution with sucrose produced more carbon dioxide than the solution with corn syrup supporting our hypothesis.