Osmosis+Lab


 * Osmosis Lab**

In this lab we observed osmosis across cell membrane and cell walls in protein channels in potato cells. Osmosis occurs when there is a difference in water potential. The water always goes down a concentration gradient. If part of a cell has a higher amount of water there is higher water potential while if there is a part with a higher amount of solutes, there is lower water potential. For this lab, we are observing osmosis happening in potato cores with sucrose solutions. We will observe the change in the mass of the potato cores as they are put in contact with solutions of sucrose with different concentration levels.
 * Introduction**
 * File**

In this lab, I felt as if my group excelled in performing the practical experiment, as we were able to achieve our goals in the lab. I felt as though the lab itself, the way we executed it by following the instructions put in place was quite simple and as a result, the lab went quite smoothly. Some negative aspects of our lab that we could have done better would be to control our controlled variables better. This would include making sure the timing for the experiment was exact, making sure each set of potato core was able to control the 24 hour time in the solution (using a timer). Another variable we could have controlled would be the volume of the solutions in the cups as we filled one cup with 50 ml of the solution and ‘eyeballed’ the rest of the cups thus making it inaccurate. Another problem that occurred was during the graphing; we had trouble figuring out the method of creating the graph the way we needed it to be (not a large problem, just an example of not knowing how to graph this kind of graph e.g. with the equation on the graph). Through this experiment, I was able to experience and observe firsthand, the process of osmosis and finding the water potential of the potato cores. It gave me great practice and gave me a good recap of osmosis and diffusion, what they are and how they work and their real life applications. If I could have done this experiment another time, I would have used a timer to time the 24 hours in between each observation of the potato cores and try to be more accurate in measurements (the volume of the solution – measuring instead of eyeballing). Also, something I would have liked to do would be to do the same experiment except to try more concentrations levels closer to the potato cores water potential so we could get real data of the water potential (try 0.23 and 0.25 concentration of sucrose etc.) thus making our observations on the water potential of the potato core more accurate.
 * Reflection**

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