Experiment - Movement across membranes

[FarAwaySS2]

What would be the limitations of an osmosis experiment? For example if it were the potato experiment, would one of the limitations be the inability to get the potato size right or something else? I'm really confused about this.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[grannysmith]

Yeah, so you could say the potato pieces being of different sizes, where surface area to volume ratio affects the volume of water moving in or out of the cells.
We had to gently pat dry the potato pieces before weighing them, and depending on how long/the way in which you dried them, the mass of the potato pieces could have been affected.

[FarAwaySS2]

Yeah, so you could say the potato pieces being of different sizes, where surface area to volume ratio affects the volume of water moving in or out of the cells.
We had to gently pat dry the potato pieces before weighing them, and depending on how long/the way in which you dried them, the mass of the potato pieces could have been affected.

Oh yes, that makes sense. Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

[nerdmmb]

Yeah, so you could say the potato pieces being of different sizes, where surface area to volume ratio affects the volume of water moving in or out of the cells.
We had to gently pat dry the potato pieces before weighing them, and depending on how long/the way in which you dried them, the mass of the potato pieces could have been affected.

Did you by any chance have any errors? If so, how did you mention it?

[RazzMeTazz]

Does anyone have any idea, how the knowledge gained in this experiment (movement of substances across membranes) would be useful to real life applications?

[RazzMeTazz]

Would it be correct to say that

When a 10% NaCl solution is hypertonic to potato cells, the potato cells have a salt concentration that is lesser than 10%?

Thanks!

[grannysmith]

Would it be correct to say that

When a 10% NaCl solution is hypertonic to potato cells, the potato cells have a salt concentration that is lesser than 10%?

Thanks!

Yes, but I probably wouldn't mention salt concentration. Rather, solutes in general.

[vox nihili]

Does anyone have any idea, how the knowledge gained in this experiment (movement of substances across membranes) would be useful to real life applications?

If you mean applications in real life to mean applications in the biosciences, then this is one of the most fundamental pieces of knowledge that we have. Knowing how a membrane functions to separate the cellular and tissue environment is enormously important.