When most biological enzymes are heated, they lose their catalytic activity. The change that occurs on heating is endothermic and spontaneous. Is the structure of the original enzyme or its new form more ordered? Explain. Original enzyme → new form
An endothermic process means the system absorbs energy from the environment..
In this case, the system is a biological enzyme (i.e. a protein)
and the heat came from something (maybe you heated the flask the
biological enzyme is in, with a flame). .
The original structure of the enzyme is more ordered than the new
form.
Why? Well you have increased the entropy of the system and a higher entropy yields higher disorder.
Think of a block of ice. As you heat it, it melts to become liquid
water. After it becomes liquid water, if you keep heating it, it
will boil and become steam (gaseous water).
As you probably know, ice is more ordered than liquid water, and liquid water is more ordered than gaseous water. So, as you heat a system it becomes more disordered.
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