The Osmosis of Potato Strips

Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Biology - General, Basics, , language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the change in mass potato strips over a period of two hours when immersed in distilled water (hypotonic solution) and salty water (hypertonic solution).

Research Question: How does the size of potato strips when immersed in both distilled water and salty water change over a period of 2 and half hours measured at 30 minutes intervals?

Background Information: Osmosis is one of the physiological processes in living organisms, among them active transport and diffusion. Osmosis is the movement of water molecules from a region of low concentration to a region of high concentration across the semi-permeable membrane. In plants it makes cells to be turgid while in animals it offsets the osmotic pressures in the cell. Plant cells are hypertonic because they have a cell sap, so when they are pout in distilled water (hypotonic solution), it absorbs water by osmosis, swells up and become turgid. They do not burst because they have a cell wall that develops a wall pressure that balances the turgor pressure exerted by turgid cells. As the plant gains turgidity, its volume increases until it achieves maximum turgidity, water will then start moving out of the cell to balance the pressure in the cells and outside environment.