Osmosis in Action

This week in Biology we were talking about osmosis so we thought we'd see osmosis in action.  

Experiment 1 - Egg Osmosis

• Before we could watch osmosis in action we needed to dissolve the shell, leaving the egg encased in it's membrane.
• The next step was to placed the eggs into hypertonic and hypotonic environments.
• A hypertonic solution is one with a higher concentration of solutes outside the cell than inside the cell.  When a cell is immersed into a hypertonic solution, the tendency is for water to flow out of the cell in order to balance the concentration of the solutes.  For our hypertonic solutions we placed one egg (shell removed) into corn syrup and another egg into a hypertonic solution of salt and water.
• A hypotonic solution refers to a lesser concentration of solutes outside the cell than inside the cell.  In an attempt to balance the concentrations of solutes inside and outside the cell, water will rush into the cell, causing it to swell and sometimes burst.  For our hypotonic solution we placed an egg (shell removed) into a jar of tap water.
  

Experiment 2 - Gummy Bear Osmosis

• Before we began we measured the length, width, height and mass of each bear
• Then we placed the bears into a glass of water and left them for two days
• Finally we removed the bears that were swollen and re-measured them