ohh yes ofcourse we measure the initial rate of a particular reaction a short time after mixing the reactants together.
These are the details that i have collected from the AS Core Practical notes. They will help u understand all this very well
Measuring the rate of enzyme reactions:
1. Firstly you need a signal to measure that shows the progress of the reaction. The signal should change with either substrate (S) or product (P) concentration, and it should preferably be something that can be measured continuously. Typical signals include colour changes, pH changes, mass changes, gas production, volume changes or turbidity changes. If the reaction has none of these properties, it can sometimes be linked to a second reaction, which does generate one of these changes.
2. If you mix your substrate with enzyme and measure your signal, you will obtain a time-course. If the signal is proportional to substrate concentration it will start high and decrease, while if the signal is proportional to product it will start low and increase. In both cases the time-course will be curved (actually an exponential curve).
3. How do you obtain a rate from this time-course? One thing that is not a good idea is to measure the time taken for the reaction, for as the time-course shows it is very difficult to say when the reaction ends: it just gradually approaches the end-point. A better method is to measure the initial rate - that is the initial slope of the time-course. This also means you don't need to record the whole time-course, but simply take one measurement a short time after mixing.
4. Repeat this initial rate measurement under different conditions (such as different substrate concentrations) and then plot a graph of rate vs. the factor. Each point on this second graph is taken from a separate initial rate measurement (or better still is an average of several initial rate measurements under the same conditions). Draw a smooth curve through the points.
Be careful not to confuse the two kinds of graph (the time-course and rate graphs) when interpreting your data.
I think we do not measure the rate throughut the whole reaction because it is better to simply measure the initial rate of a reaction than to monitor the whole reaction because the initial rate measurement gives just as accurate a result and saves time ofcourse....this is all i know..hope i helped...