both papers Flashcards
A student set up an experiment to investigate osmosis. The student put 25cm3 of 20% sucrose solution into visking tube 1 and 25cm3 of distilled water into visking tube 2. Both tubes were placed in 5% sucrose solution and left for 1 hour. Explain why the tubes look different after an hour.
Since tube 1 has a higher sucrose concentration than the solution. the solution is hypo tonic. This means that the water in the sucrose solution would diffuse across the semi permeable membrane and make tube 1 turgid. This is because the water would follow the concentration gradient of moving from an area of high water potential to an area of low water potential to try and balance out the concentrations. However for tube 2, the concentration of sucrose is lower within the tube so the water would diffuse out across the semi permeable membrane, following the concentration gradient. This causes the tube to look flaccid since the water has diffused out to try and lower the concentration of the 5% sucrose solution.
