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Curious question.... Hydrogen peroxide?

February 19th, 2005 at 02:55 pm

Why does Hydrogen peroxide foam up when you put it on a cut?

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is something you can buy at the drug store. What you are buying is a 3-percent solution, meaning the bottle contains 97-percent water and 3-percent hydrogen peroxide. Most people use it as an antiseptic. It turns out that it is not very good as an antiseptic, but it is not bad for washing cuts and scrapes and the foaming looks cool.

The reason why it foams is because blood and cells contain an enzyme called catalase. Since a cut or scrape contains both blood and damaged cells, there is lots of catalase floating around.

When the catalase comes in contact with hydrogen peroxide, it turns the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into water (H2O) and oxygen gas (O2).


H2O2 --> H2O + O2
Catalase does this extremely efficiently -- up to 200,000 reactions per second. The bubbles you see in the foam are pure oxygen bubbles being created by the catalase. Try putting a little hydrogen peroxide on a cut potato and it will do the same thing for the same reason -- catalase in the damaged potato cells reacts with the hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen peroxide does not foam in the bottle or on your skin because there is no catalase to help the reaction to occur. Hydrogen peroxide is stable at room temperature.
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Before I started steam cleaning, I used to apply hydrogen peroxide to various cleaning surfaces and I'd get a kick out of the foaming effect when it came in contact with moldy spots.

Other uses for Hydrogen peroxide?

Apply a drop or two to your toothbrush and brush your teeth prior to applying toothpaste. Goodbye expensive white strips!

Brush your tongue.. it kills the bacteria that live on your tongue.. (the ones that cause yucky breath)


H2O + O2
Catalase does this extremely efficiently -- up to 200,000 reactions per second. The bubbles you see in the foam are pure oxygen bubbles being created by the catalase. Try putting a little hydrogen peroxide on a cut potato and it will do the same thing for the same reason -- catalase in the damaged potato cells reacts with the hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen peroxide does not foam in the bottle or on your skin because there is no catalase to help the reaction to occur. Hydrogen peroxide is stable at room temperature.
________________________________________________

Before I started steam cleaning, I used to apply hydrogen peroxide to various cleaning surfaces and I'd get a kick out of the foaming effect when it came in contact with moldy spots.

Other uses for Hydrogen peroxide?

Apply a drop or two to your toothbrush and brush your teeth prior to applying toothpaste. Goodbye expensive white strips!

Brush your tongue.. it kills the bacteria that live on your tongue.. (the ones that cause yucky breath)


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