In this investigation I will observe the effect a concentrated sugar solution has on the rate of osmosis in a plant. The vegetable I have chosen for this experiment is a potato.

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Osmosis Investigation

In this investigation I will observe the effect a concentrated sugar solution has on the rate of osmosis in a plant. The vegetable I have chosen for this experiment is a potato. I have soaked them in several concentrations of sucrose, firstly 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6and then the class concentrations of 0.2, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6. These are the results I will analyse. Hopefully using this method I will be bale to observe osmosis at work.

Osmosis is the diffusion of water from a region on which they are in a high concentration to a region where the water molecules have a low concentration. They diffuse through a semi-permeable surface, the potato has a semi-permeable surface making it ideal to use.

Equipment    

Potatoes

Boiling Tubes

Weighing Scales

Ruler

Varying Concentrations of Sucrose

Water

Potato Borer

Method:

  1. Use the potato borer to cut several 2cm long cylinder shaped pieces of potato.
  2. Record the weight and length of the pieces.
  3. Soak the potato pieces in the concentrations of sucrose (0.2, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 and water) in a boiling tube.
  4. Leave for 24 hours.
  5. Record the new weight and length of the potato pieces.

Fair Test Requirements

To make sure the experiment is fair, there will be several things that I will have to monitor. For the experiment I will be using three pieces of potato for each solution, from the same potato, taking the average result to form my graph. All the potato pieces will also be measured and weighed before hand so it doesn’t influence the results. The temperature of the lab will also be monitored and kept the same, if not, then this could influence the results.

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Prediction

I predict that as the concentration of sucrose solution increases, the potato chip after 24 hours will decrease in mass and length. I can make this prediction knowing how osmosis works. When there is a high sucrose concentration it will be greater than that inside the potato cells. This means the water from the cells will diffuse into the surrounding solution balancing the water and sucrose concentration. As the cells loses water through diffusion, the potato chip becomes plasmolysed, making the chip collapse, which causes the chip to change in mass and length. The above can also be ...

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