Osmosis And Diffusion Lab Report

Osmosis and diffusion are sometimes mixed up without much thought, but they are very different in many ways. Osmosis is a defined as the movement of water through a semipermeable membrane (). The membrane is fully permeable for the small water molecules, but is selectively permeable to any substance that is lager that a normal water molecule. One example might be a glucose and water mixture, when the solute is put into one side of a U-shaped tube that has a semipermeable membrane between the solvent on the other side. The water then moves through the membrane to make the solution more isotonic, which means that each side will have an equal amount of water to glucose ratio. With osmosis there are also processes that do not end so well in the concentrations being equal. In hypotonic solutions water flows into a low concentration area, in a hypertonic solution water is forced out
A concentration gradient is the “difference in the concentration of molecules or ions inside the cell… compared to outside the cell” (LMAP 41). An example of simple diffusion would be if there were cookies cooking in the oven in the kitchen, which has a high concentration of the smell, travels through the house to a room on the second floor, an area of low concentration of the smell. The disease, Cholera, uses osmosis when the bacteria is ingested. Cholera is a “diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium Vibrio Cholerae” (CDC 1). The bacterium is found in water that has been contaminated with by fecal matter, which has the bacterium in it. The vibrio cholerae bacterium can also be found in raw shellfish, or if it is undercooked. The “bacteria releases a toxin that causes an increased amount of water to be released from the cells that line the intestine. The increased water produces severe diarrhea