This lab helps further our understanding of essential principles behind diffusion and osmosis. Permeability, concentration gradients, plasmolysis, water potential, and equilibrium were also concepts that were delved into in this lab. Understanding how diffusion and osmosis works is essential to understanding biology. Each time a cell has something move into or out of it, some sort of principle studied in this lab is occurring. Diffusion, osmosis, and passive and active transport are all fundamental concepts of Biology. This lab simulated osmosis in the cell. In this case, we used dialysis tubing to simulate the semi-permeable membrane of an animal cell.
Materials and Methods:
Dialysis tubing (6 x 30cm)
String for tying dialysis tubing
Clear plastic drinking cups
Sharpie Markers
Funnels
Glucose/starch solution
Distilled water
IKI solution
Glucose TesTape
0, .2, .4, .6, .8, and 1 Molar Sucrose Solution
Cork Borer
Potatoes
Scale
Exercise 1: Diffusion
Fill a dialysis bag with a sugar/starch solution and immerse the bag in a dilute iodine solution. Water, sugar, starch, and iodine molecules will all be in motion, and each molecule will move to a region of its lower concentration, unless the molecule is too large to pass through the membrane.
Exercise 2: Osmosis
Investigate the relationship between solute concentration and water movement by filling six different dialysis bags with increasing concentrations of sucrose and placing the bags into distilled water. After the time for the experiment has elapsed, compare the initial weight of each bag with its final weight, calculate the percent change in mass, and compare data with rest of class. Exercise 3: Water Potential & Potato Core
The exercise is similar to Exercise 2, except that cores from potatoes are utilized instead of dialysis bags. Submerge the cores in solutions of varying sucrose concentrations. Graph data of percent change and determine which concentration of
Cited: College Entrance Examination Board, AP Biology Lab Manual, 2001.