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Egg Osmosis Egg Lab Report

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How Does Osmosis Affect a Cell? The function of a cell membrane is to protect the inside of the cell. Since they’re semipermeable, they keep some things out of the cell and let others in. Osmosis is when water passes through a semipermeable membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. In the lab, the egg represents a cell. We were testing to see how osmosis would affect the egg after soaking it in water for 24 hours. My first hypothesis was that if we soaked a shell-less egg in tap water for approximately 24 hours, the egg would gain mass from absorbing water. This is because the egg’s membrane contains beratin, which will act as channel proteins, allowing water to diffuse through the membrane. My second hypothesis was that …show more content…

By subtracting the mass of the egg on day one from the mass of the egg on day two, I found that the egg increased in mass by 4.35 grams. My second hypothesis was refuted by the data. Instead of my prediction of the mass staying the same, the mass of the egg decreased on day 2 by 31.63 grams. I calculated this by subtracting the mass of the egg on day two from the mass of the egg on day one. For the egg that we soaked in water, the egg’s mass and the volume of the water went up. The egg’s mass increased because of osmosis. Since there was a higher concentration of water outside of the egg, the water wanted to move across the semipermeable membrane into the egg where there was a lower concentration. The increase in volume came from displacement from the egg. The mass of the egg soaked in corn syrup decreased and the volume of the syrup in the beaker increased. There was a higher concentration of water inside the egg than outside, so the water moved across the membrane to leave the egg to go to where there was a lower concentration. The mass decreased since water was leaving the egg. The volume increased because the water from the egg added to the corn

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