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The Effect Of Water On Concentration On The Concentration

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Abstract:

The main purpose of the experiment was to test the idea that water would move from the higher concentration to the lower concentration. In order to test this theory, we placed potato slices in 7 different containers, each containing different concentrations of NaCl, to measure the weight change from osmosis. The containers ranged from 0M NaCl all the way to .6M NaCl. We measured the potato slices before and after placing the slices in the solutions and recorded the net change in weight to determine the tonicity of the potato cells. Our results showed that the potato slices put in a NaCl solution of .2M or higher lost weight and the potato slices put in a NaCl solution of .1M or lower gained weight. This shows that the osmolarity of the potato falls within the range of .1M to .2M, and it also proves the process of Osmosis by having the higher concentration move to the lower concentration. In addition to this, it can be concluded that the osmolarity of cells can be determined by observing the affects of osmosis.

Introduction:

Osmosis can be defined as the force that drives the movement of water due to differences in solute concentration. The process involves the random movement of molecular water molecules through a semi-permeable membrane from regions of higher concentration to regions of lower concentration until both regions equal out (Ledbetter 2013, Ness 2013). Polar substances such as glucose and salts cannot travel through the cell membrane, which

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