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Hypertonic Acid And Osmosis Experiment

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Osmosis is the transfer of water molecules from places where there is a lot of water molecules to places there are not many water molecules. When the cell is selectively permeable it allows certain substances in and out of the cell. There are three terms for the amount of solute in a cell isotonic, hypotonic, and hypertonic. Isotonic means there is a balance of solute inside and outside of the cell. Hypotonic is when there is lower concentration of solute in the cell than the concentration outside of the cell. Hypertonic means there is a more solute in the cell than outside of the cell. The molecules want to reach equilibrium, or balance out the amount of water inside and outside the cell. In this alcohol investigation, the purpose was to …show more content…

This is true because in Osmosis the water wants to go to the place where there is a small amount of water to balance out the concentrations. The cup, when it was filled with 30% and 70% alcohol, had the water inside the cell leave to go balance out the lowered concentration of water. Notice in the graph below, when there was 0% alcohol in the cup the weight increased. Unlike the trials for 30% and 70% alcohol the cell gained weight because it did not have to go dilute another substance, so the water did not have to leave the cell to maintain equilibrium. All of this means that when there is another substance, the concentration of water changes causing osmosis to occur balancing out the concentrations. This evidence supports the claim because once the alcohol entered the cup it changed the concentration of water on the outside, making the water leave the cell to balance out both concentrations. Again, osmosis is when the water from a high concentration goes to a low water concentration. During the trials with 30% the substance mixture outside of the cell was hypotonic, meaning that the concentration of solutes, or a substance that dissolves in another, was lower than the concentration of solvents, the substance that dissolves. In the trial with 70% alcohol in the cup, the situation is flipped and the outside of the cell is hypertonic, meaning there is a high concentration of solute and a low concentration of solvent. In this case the solute is the alcohol and the water is the solvent. Looking at others arguments, other groups support the claim stated at the very start of this argument. Other groups all had something along the lines of “when there is an increasing amount of alcohol the amount of water in the cell

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