Osmosis in plant tissue.

Osmosis in plant tissue

Introduction

In this experiment I am going to find the water potential of a chip, by immersing it in different concentrations of sucrose solutions using the theory of osmosis, the gain or loss in length of the chip can be measured, in osmosis water molecules move down a gradient from a concentrated area to an area where they are less concentrated. In the first half of the experiment, half an hour should be sufficient to find the water potential of the chip. The process of this is also known as graded osmotion and the chip will shrink due to plasmolysis of cells.

The equipment that I needed for this experiment is as follows

Equipment:

5 petri dishes

Sucrose

Distilled water to make up the sucrose solution

10 chips cut up to be 40 millemetres in length

Paper towel to mop up spills

Ruler to measure chips

My predictions

In this experiment I predict that the more concentrated the sucrose solution the shorter the chip will become in length, e.g. a chip with a sucrose concentration of nil will be a lot longer than a chip which has been in a solution with a concentration of 0.8, this is because the sucrose fills in the gaps of the water and the water molecules move down a concentration gradient to an area where they are less concentrated.