Why glucose brown after heating with benedicts solution but maltose is brick red?
Now, glucose is a monosaccharide…& maltose is a disaccharide of 2 glucose molecules. When a carbohydrate is heated with Benedict’s solution, the brown/brick red colour is due to the Cu2O produced. Now, exactly how much is produced depends on no. of free reactive aldehyde groups available on a molecule. In glucose, there is one on each molecule. In maltose too, there is only one…but on heating with benedict’s solution, it may undergo hydrolysis, thus giving rise to two glucose molecules & thus two reactive aldehyde groups. So, I guess the different amounts of Cu2O in the two cases gives rise to the colour difference.
