Reducing properties of glucose

Principle
The aldehyde groups in glucose can be detected with silver nitrate, Fehling's solution and methylene blue. Glucose acts as a strong reducing agent in basic solutions. Glucose is thereby reduced to gluconic acid. Glass mirrors can be prepared with ammonical silver nitrate and glucose.The aldehyde group is responsible for the reducing properties of glucose. The reaction first takes place in hot alkaline solution. The chain type structure with the reactive acetaldehyde groups is formed from the stable hemiacetal form of glucose under these conditions.

Learning objectives

• Glucose is a reducing agent
• Detection methods for glucose

Benefits

• Easy teaching and efficient learning by using interactive experimentation PHYWE-Software
• Experiment is part of a complete solution set with experiments for the topic Food Chemistry matched with international curriculum: all topics are covered