What is Osmosis? Osmosis is defined as the process by which the molecules of a solvent pass from a low concentration solute to a high concentration solute through a semi-permeable membrane.
Osmosis is the process by which water enters our tissues. All of our cells are surrounded by a membrane that selectively allows in anything the cell needs but prevents unwanted molecules from entering.
An egg also has a membrane surrounding it so we can use it to represent a cell and see how osmosis works.
The raw egg of a chicken has a semipermeable membrane that only allows a few substances to enter and leave through it (water being one). However, large molecules like salt and sugar are too big to pass through it.
Lets see what happens if we dip a raw egg in vinegar.
For this experiment, we need two raw eggs, 1 bottle of vinegar, and two glasses.
The first stage of the experiment was to soak the egg in vinegar. You will have seen that the shell completely disappears. Vinegar in fact contains acetic acid and this reacts with the calcium carbonate making up the shell of the egg. This reaction gives off carbon dioxide so if you were paying attention you will have seen bubbles coming off the egg as soon as it was added to the vinegar.
After soaking in vinegar you should have also noticed that the egg increases a little in size. This is because the water in the vinegar can enter the egg through the membrane, moving from the higher water concentration in vinegar to the lower concentration in the egg through the process of Osmosis.
If you now put the egg in water, it will grow in size a lot more due to the much larger water concentration gradient across the membrane. If you add food coloring to the water you can see the process of osmosis in action as the coloured water passes into the egg. Water is known as hypotonic, ie. very dilute and contains more water than the egg.
If instead you place the vinegar soaked egg in corn syrup you will see the opposite. There is a much higher water concentration in the egg than in the syrup so water will pass in the opposite direction. This means that the egg will shrink in size. The corn syrup is a hypertonic liquid, ie. very concentrated with not much water compared to the egg.
#RawEgg #Vinegar #SemipermeableMembrane #Osmosis #CellStructure #CellFunction
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