To find out at what concentration of sugar there's no osmosis.

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Biology Coursework: Osmosis

Caroline Snopek

Aim: To find out at what concentration of sugar there's no osmosis.

Background Knowledge: Osmosis is the movement of water from a region of high water concentration through a semi-permeable membrane to a region of low water concentration. Semi-permeable membranes are very thin layers of material (cell membranes are semi-permeable) which allow some things to pass through them but prevent other things from passing through, i.e. water.

Osmosis is sometimes called a special case of diffusion because the water molecules move from a high to a low concentration of water molecules.

In this case, sugar molecules are too big to pass trough the semi-permeable membrane but the water molecules aren't. The water molecules in the high concentration region will want to spread out and the only way is to go trough the semi - permeable membrane.

Planning: In this experiments I'll be using potato discs which have a semi-permeable membrane that will allow me investigate the affect of osmosis in different sugar concentrations.

Preliminary Results:

Concentration

Mass before (g)

Average (g)

Mass after (g)

Average (g)

(moles/liter)