Extraordinary Things Behind Osmosis and Difusion

its a biology project. dont ask :))

Many things are happening in life that we can’t quite explain without science. One of the examples is why potatoes absorb water or release water. I bet you never notice that when you cook potatoes, it gets a bit heavier or lighter. Well, that happens because of osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water particles through a selectively permeable membrane from a higher water potential to a lower water potential.

We can prove this by experimenting with a potato.

This is how we experimented a while back:

1. Prepare 4 beakers. One with 5 gr of salt, 10 gr of salt, and 20 gr of salt. And the other one is with diluted water.

2. Then we cut 4 potatoes to equal size, make sure to calculate the weight before you put the potato into the beakers.

3. Next, we put the potatoes into each of the beakers. Then we wait for around 20 minutes.

4. Once the potatoes are soaked, calculate the weight of the potatoes.

The results are rather confusing. Believe it or not, the Potato with more salt dissolved loses more weight than the other potatoes. While the potato with distilled water gains more weight than the other potatoes.

Now this happens because the water molecules goes from the higher water potential to the lower water potential. In the beaker with diluted water, the potato has a lower water potential than the diluted water itself. That's why the potato gained more weight. The water molecules move from the diluted water to the potato to even out the potato’s solution. Meanwhile, the potato that is put in the solution with the most salt loses its weight because the salt solution is more concentrated than the potato. The water molecules move from the potato to the salt water to make the salt solution less concentrated. This process perfectly describes osmosis.

And if you're wondering what's the difference between osmosis and diffusion, Osmosis is the movement of water molecules from concentrated to less concentrated. Diffusion is the movement of the substance from concentrated to less concentrated. One example of diffusion is when you drop ink in water.