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Urinary System Lab Report

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Introduction
When an animal drinks water and eats food, the amount of sodium chloride and water put into the plasma of the blood can be either hypertonic, isotonic, or hypotonic to the homeostatic concentration of sodium chloride in the plasma, which is maintained around 280 to 300 mOsmols (Sherwood 2013). Once the solution has reached the plasma, it will equilibrate with the interstitial fluids, and then the intercellular fluids. To maintain this equilibrium, it is necessary to excrete excess salts and water from the body cells. The kidneys are the functional organs of the urinary system, and within the kidneys is the nephron, the functional unit that carries out the equilibration. The nephrons, through filtration, reabsorption, and secretion, produce the urine that is excreted by an animal. In order to maintain homeostatic levels, the hormones ADH, which is released in response to increased plasma osmolarity to increase water reabsorption, and ANF, which leads to decreased sodium reabsorption due to an increase in vascular volume, are released to regulate salt and water concentration in the body. In this experiment, students tested the effects of drinking solutions of salt water on the factors of urine output, sodium chloride output, sodium chloride concentration, and …show more content…

As for groups 2 and 3, there was a slight increase in NaCl output over time, with both lines peaking at the 120 minute trial. The control trial again stayed relatively constant, ending and starting at about the same value (Figure 4). The pure water trial did not end at the control value, but it did begin to decrease towards the control. Groups 2 and 3, however, continued to increase the entire length of the experiment, so the last value did not drop back towards the control

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