Investigating Osmosis in potato cells Essay Example

a concentration of the solution which has an equal water potential to the potato, which will result in neither a gain nor a loss of mass for the potato chip as the water would have no preference of location.Plant vacuoles accumulate enough dissolved compounds to give the plant cell a low enough osmotic potential to absorb water via osmosis.Planned/detailed method:A range of sucrose solutions will be prepared with concentrations 0.

2 molar, 0.4 molar, 0.6 molar, 0.8 molar and 1 molar. This will be done by adding varying amounts of distilled water to varying amounts of sugar solution.

Sections of potato will be cut using a scalpel and will be measured using a ruler. The chips should also be weighed and dried before the experiment begins. This part of the preparation must be done very accurately as a change in the surface area may allow more or less osmosis to occur. The weight and length are being measured in this investigation.

The mass of each chip will be measured before and after so that more results can be obtained and to see if osmosis has occurred. Five potato chips will be placed in each of the five test tubes. They would be labeled so you know which test tube is what solution and how much. The potato pieces will then be placed in specific test tubes and left for 5 minutes with the mixture in their.

Then the potato pieces will be removed and dried using paper towels and then re-weighed. I will repeat this experiment 3 times. This will hopefully produce accurate results and an accurate conclusion and graph.Variables:To create a fair test, certain aspects

of the experiment will have to be kept the same whilst one key variable is changed.

I have chosen to vary the concentration of the sugar solution. This will give me a varied set of results from which I hope to make a decent conclusion. If any of the non-variables below are not kept constant it would mean it would not be a fair test. For instance if one of the potato chips was 1cm longer the surface area of the chip would be larger and there would therefore be more space for osmosis to occur. Doing all the tests at one temperature will make it fair.To carry out this experiment I have to make sure that:That I do this investigation at room temperature.

The water potential of the potato initially will be kept the same by using the same type of potato, which has been treated in the same way. The mass of the potato is a dependent variable, and this means that it will be measured throughout the experiment. I will measure the mass in grams. The potato chip will be measured before it is put in the solution, and after.

This will allow us to see whether osmosis has taken place, and to what extent. The volume of the solution that the potato chips are kept in must be fair. The must be totally covered in the solution.Risk assessment/ safety precautions:During this investigation, there are a number of safety factors which you have to take into consideration:When using the scalpel make sure the blade is far apart from your fingers in case of a serious cut. Make sure you are using the

borer in the correct technique otherwise it could cut you.

Make sure a white tile is kept underneath when cutting the potato with the scalpel. Before the actual experiment, I did a preliminary test so I have a fair idea of what changes I need to make. I also did this as a practice run so I could do my actual investigation quickly and accurately.