And what this equation does is it builds a relationship between the rate at which the enzyme operates on a certain substrate and the concentration of that substrate in that surrounding environment. So if we plot the following equation on the x y axis, we get the following red curve and notice an important point about the red curve. The red curve initially increases very rapidly, so essentially linearly. And then the slope begins to decrease over time. So the slope begins to level off and it approaches a maximum value known as the v max. It approaches that value asymptotically.