Osmosis Lab Report
... water to move through the cell membrane into the cell. A solution is hypertonic if its concentration of dissolved substances is greater than the concentration inside the cell. If a cell were placed in a hypertonic solution, it would lose water. All particles that pass through the plasma membrane by the process of diffusion do not require energy, so their movement is called passive transport. The transport of materials against a concentration gradient requires energy, so it is called active transport. The purpose of this experiment was to make observations and conclusions about the ability of cells to adjust to varying chemical concentrations in the environment and to observe the effect of isotonic, hypotonic and hypertonic solutions on cells. I hypothesize that when the sucrose concentration will change, the mass will also change. For the experiment, the following materials were used: potatoes, petri dishes, a balance, a graduated cylinder, distilled water, sucrose solution and five beakers. Each of the beakers were labeled with a different sucrose concentration (0.0; 0.2; 0.4; 0.6; 0.8). Three potato cores equal in length and width were cut for each beaker, the cores are weighted and placed in the beakers. After that, the solutions are placed in the beaker according to their labels. The solutions will be in the beaker for twenty-four hours. After twenty0four hours, the cores are taken out of the solutions and blotted dry. Their mass is recorded in the Final Mass column of the data table. The percent change in mass is calculated and recorded for each sample. The results supported my hypothesis because for the 0.0 sucrose concentration the percent change in mass was 15% for the 0.2 concentration, it was 0%, for 0.4 it was 2%, for the 0.6 concentration it was 29%, and for the 0.8 sucrose concentration, the percent change in mass was 38%. The reason for the change in mass is the process of osmosis. When the sucrose concentration was 0, the cores gained ...