In the distilled water, I believe that the water is more concentrated in the potato, and therefore the water should transfer from the water to the potato, making the potato bigger in size, and heavier in weight. The potato tissues, being surrounded by a weak solution, will be most likely to swell up and become turgid, taking in all the water it can possibly take in.
Fair Test
Fair testing should play a big part in this experiment. If this experiment isn’t a fair test, we will be obtaining the wrong results, which could lead us to the wrong conclusions.
First of all, and most importantly, we will have to get the measurements and the weights of the solutions and the potatoes as exact, and as accurate as possible. We will try and get the measurements of the potatoes as accurate as possible for every single potato, evenly cutting the potato pieces, and making a record of the length to the nearest millimetre. And we will be using a very sensitive balance so that we can get the best readings possible.
But I believe one of the most important step in the fair testing is to make sure that the potato is fully covered by the solution. This is because the potato should fully submerge, by having total contact with the solution.
When using the balance, we will make sure that the balance is reading zero with the small foam bowl, before we put the 3 potatoes on it. This is so that we don´t get a false reading, with the weight of our potato with the reading it had before. And after the experiment, we will measure the 3 potatoes that should be dried as possible, and weigh it the same way, taking the reading to the nearest 2 decimal places and we will also be reading the measurements of the measuring cylinder by reading the bottom of the meniscus.
Another important factor of a fair test is to start and stop the clock as quickly as possible. This meaning that we should start the clock as soon as the potato is put inside the test tube, and stop the clock as soon as 20 minutes have passed. Stopping the clock, taking them out and measuring it all in less than a minute us quite impossible because we lack the number of balances. And there are obviously too many sets to go through at such a fast time. Therefore, we will try our best to weigh the potatoes as quickly and as safely as we can.
Small things such as a dirty test tube, and a slightly cracked measuring cylinder could still affect the results, and therefore we will take these into account as well.
Safety
Safety is an important aspect in every experiment, even if the experiment seems to be very harmless. And that is why we take this into consideration, no matter what.
We will be using a very sharp knife, which could injure someone if it’s not handled properly. And we will also be careful that the solutions don’t get into our bodies internally, just in case, because we are not fully aware of the damage it could do to us.
But other than that, their weren’t any bigger matters to be cautious of.
Method
I believe this task is very simple and should be very easy to carry out the experiment. The investigation is very straightforward.
There won’t be any control for this experiment, because the weight would vary depending on the potato pieces. And therefore, it might affect the results, which we are going to take in after the experiment.
First I will have to get the pieces of potatoes ready. I will push the cork borer through the potato, cutting it into long cylinders with a diameter of 6mm. And then I will cut the potatoes into cylinders of 40mm and then weigh them.
I will weigh each set and have them ready for us to put into the test tube.
Then we will put the potatoes in the 3 test tubes at the same time and start the clock running for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I will weigh them.
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We will repeat the experiment two times so that we can make sure that all our results are similar, and so that we will be able to take the average of the 2 experiments. This makes sure that we get accurate results. Repeating the experiments are important, because we will be able to receive valid results, and looks for any anomalous results. Not to mention that we will take the fair testing into account.
Conclusion
In this experiment, I believe that I have collected enough data to support my hypothesis. This investigation was, I think, successful. Successful meaning my results collaborated my predictions.
The potato cells, working to stay alive, took in, or gave out the water depending on the concentration of the tissue, and the concentration of the solution it is surrounded in.
The results were fine and by looking at the weights measured before the experiment, you can see that there is no reading, which seems to be out of the line. As the weights before the experiment range between 5.62g and 5.87g, this tells us that the potato pieces were cut well, and I believe accurate enough. There were, I believe, no anomalous results after the experiment as the weights were very similar in their own category. And this tells us that my experiment was successful.
The graphs and the results show that Osmosis actually took place in the experiment.
There doesn’t seem to be any results, which undermine my predictions, and our group I find any anomalous results, which means we didn’t have to repeat any of our experiments more than three times.
Having the results that backs up my hypothesis proves that this investigation was fully accomplished, and was an achievement.
Evaluation
I followed the plan correctly; I believe I gained accurate and sufficient enough results to conclude the experiment, and to prove my hypothesis.
My final results were very reliable, due to the precautions I took to make this a fair test.
To make this experiment better, I believe that I could have done one test at a time, so that we can reduce the time difference, when I have to move the potato from the test tube to the balance. Between this, we have to dry the potatoes just enough, and then put it on the balance. When we are doing this for one set, writing down the results at the same time, while the other 5 sets are on the tissue paper, the water outside the potato tissue is going to vary for all. Therefore, we would be able to concentrate more on one of the sets, instead of trying to finish all of them as quickly as we can.
Experimenting with one set for a longer period of time, for each set, would lead us to better results, because the osmosis action would reach its maximum capability, and therefore tell us how much water could be transferred for each solution.
Repeating the same tasks many other times wouldn’t have been very useful, since we had already done the result 3 times, and ALL the results were reliable.
Even though we didn’t use these experimental plans, we still got results that were correct, according to my hypothesis, and backed up my predictions.
But overall, given the apparatus that we got to carry out the test, I think this experiment turned out to be very successful, and I’m very pleased with my results.
