Osmosis and Diffusion
Introduction
When a substance is released into an area, the random movement of its molecules results in a multitude of collisions. These collisions, in turn, lead to a dispersion of the molecules. The overall movement of the molecules will be from an area of high concentration, where there will be more collisions, to areas of low concentration, where the number of collisions will be much less. This process of dispersion will continue until there is no net gain or loss of molecules in an area. The process by which this equilibrium occurs is called diffusion. Diffusion is vitally important to biology on many levels; individual cells, organelles, and even whole organisms rely on diffusion to carry out the processes essential to life. One especially important aspect of diffusion is osmosis, or the diffusion of water. This often occurs across a semi-permeable membrane …show more content…
of dialysis tubing, 25 mL of sucrose solutions with concentrations of 0.02 Molar, 0.04M, 0.06M, 0.08M, 1.0M, as well as 25mL of distilled water, six 250 mL beakers, a balance, and paper towels. We first cut the dialysis tubing into 6 pieces, each 1ft. long, and placed them into a beaker of water. We then tied off the dialysis tubing and poured 25 mL of distilled water in. We repeated this with the rest of the five pieces dialysis tubing, pouring a different molarity of sucrose solution in different dialysis tubes. After all the tubes were filled and tied, we then dried the bags and weigh each one on the scale. After all the data was recorded, we filled all the beakers about ¾ full of distilled water, placed the bags into each beaker in unison, and waited 30 minutes. Next, the bags were removed from the beakers, dried, and weighed separately. We expected the mass to increase with increasing molarity because with the higher the concentrations, more water would need to be diffused into the bag to reach