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Solute Concentration, Particle Size, And A Membrane 's Selective Permeability Affect The Occurrence Of Diffusion

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Objective: The overall purpose of this experiment is to determine how solute concentration, particle size, and a membrane’s selective permeability affect the occurrence of diffusion.

Hypothesis: In exercise one, as potassium permanganate’s molecular mass (158.03 g/mol) being less than half that of methylene blue (319.85 g/mol), KMnO4 is expected to further diffuse in the agar plate due to the negative correlation associated with particle size and rate of diffusion rate with a semipermeable membrane. With this correlation in mind, it is expected a color change would occur only within the tube, as starch would remain in a dialysis tube while iodine is able to enter the tube due to starch’s relatively larger molecular size in comparison to iodine. Additionally, a selectively permeable dialysis tube containing a higher solute concentration in comparison to its surrounding solution should gain volume and the opposite (decreased volume) with a tube in a hyperosmotic solution because osmosis of water, rather than diffusion of sucrose, from a high water concentration (distilled water solution) to that of a lower water concentration (within the sucrose bag).

Background and Introduction Within this experiment’s purpose, understanding of the cell membrane, diffusion, and osmosis must first be known. As a part of all living cells, the membrane is meant to serve as a semipermeable barrier between what is inside, intracellular, and outside of the cell, extracellular, as well as

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