Battle of the Starches: A Comparison of CO2 Production of Corn Sugar and Rice Sugar

Abstract

Baker’s Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) may be the most important microorganism widely used in all societies around the world. For our experiment, we wanted to know how much carbon dioxide can be produced by corn sugar and rice sugar, and which sugar can produce more CO2. We hypothesized that the CO2 production of corn sugar and rice sugar will be about the same because they are both starches and starch decomposes to make ethanol and CO2 as a byproduct. As a result, rice sugar produced a significant amount of CO2 compared to corn sugar, thus proving our hypothesis to be false.