How Does The Concentration Of Water Affect The Rate Of Potato Osmosis
The aim of this experiment was to show the water potentials of young, old and damaged potatoes and different sucrose concentrations (0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30, 0.35 and 0.50). It was expected that the potatoes would lose weight as the potatoes would have lower water potential when placed in a solution , and in this can be taken from the theory of osmosis which states that “the passive diffusion of water molecules across a selectively permeable membrane down a concentration gradient” (Taylor and Bruenn, 2009), moving water from a high to a low concentration, so in this case water would move from the potato tuber to the sucrose solution reducing the weight of potatoes. Pospíšilová (1970) also states that the water absorption rate of tissue will decrease if
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This was seen clearly with the young potato which has a clear negative correlation, as the concentration of solution increases the weight of the young potato gets more negative, which proves that the potato had a high water content when compared to the sucrose concentration around it so the water moved from the potato to the solution causing the potato to lose weight. The young potato also shows a drastic decrease in weight within the 0.25M concentration and this could be because the plant cells were still ‘turgid’ before the 0.25M concentration (Nulsen et al., 1977). When cells are turgid they become swollen, increasing the overall weight of the plant. There was an increase of weight in the damaged potato in concentration of 0.2M and this can be associated to the experiment that Kosinki (2013) did where he found that a potato gained weight at 0.2M. This is because the tissues are damaged and the way that water enters and leaves cannot be easily controlled. After the increase in mass of the damaged potato there was a constant decrease in mass which follows the young potato trend which means that there was a loss of water in the tuber causing a decrease in mass as the tissues in the potato had more water than
This was seen clearly with the young potato which has a clear negative correlation, as the concentration of solution increases the weight of the young potato gets more negative, which proves that the potato had a high water content when compared to the sucrose concentration around it so the water moved from the potato to the solution causing the potato to lose weight. The young potato also shows a drastic decrease in weight within the 0.25M concentration and this could be because the plant cells were still ‘turgid’ before the 0.25M concentration (Nulsen et al., 1977). When cells are turgid they become swollen, increasing the overall weight of the plant. There was an increase of weight in the damaged potato in concentration of 0.2M and this can be associated to the experiment that Kosinki (2013) did where he found that a potato gained weight at 0.2M. This is because the tissues are damaged and the way that water enters and leaves cannot be easily controlled. After the increase in mass of the damaged potato there was a constant decrease in mass which follows the young potato trend which means that there was a loss of water in the tuber causing a decrease in mass as the tissues in the potato had more water than