There are about 700 enzymes active in the human body, some of which we need to digest our food.
Spare a thought for Santa this year, with all those treats he needs to digest. If he has a glass of milk, and a mince pie or cookie at every home – that will be 150 billion calories on one night! Enough calories to keep him going for thousands of years!! By the time he has been around the world, he will drink enough milk to fill over 50 Olympic swimming pools. If his New Year’s resolution is to lose the extra weight, Santa would need to have a brisk walk, of around 1.3 billion miles. That is 54,000 times around the earth, or a long time on the running machine!
His reindeers have the opposite problem. They need to eat over 7.5 billion billion carrots to get enough energy to keep them going. There are not so many calories in a carrot!! Much better for them all if Santa shared his mince pies. His digestive system would be much happier as well!
GCSE scientists- you need to be able to explain how enzymes work. If you need some help with this, try Part 1 of our new guide “How to work with Enzymes”. It includes information on how enzymes work, and how different factors affect enzyme activity. There are also questions for you to try, alongside answers to check your understanding.
Click the picture below to see the guide.
If you found this useful and think you would benefit from some additional help, please contact us.
We welcome guest bloggers.