Beetroot Essay

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Using this raw data, it can be determined that 0% ethanol, or no control, does not assist movement of the surrounding liquid. Without any amount of ethanol present, the colour would have come from either the cutting of the cores. This may have caused the beetroot cell to expand in size due to water moving in to try to even out the concentrations across the membrane. Despite the fact that the cores were cleaned after preparation, some release of pigment from the vacuoles would have still occurred. This would be most likely because the cutting of the core had left some cell membranes ruptured and there was still more pigment to move from the cell into the surrounding water by diffusion.

The 1% ethanol test showed the lowest out of all ethanol concentration results for the colour pigment as it gave the result of 3. The membrane was disrupted to a small amount, allowing the red pigment to be more …show more content…

University of Westminster, London student Abigail Barkley took part in a similar investigation, with a purpose of “study[ing] the effect of different alcohols at various concentrations on cell membranes.” In summary, her investigation was very similar, however other forms of alcohol were tested in addition for comparison purposes. Her ethanol trials (2 trials at 5 different ethanol concentration levels) concluded that as the concentration of the ethanol solution increased, as did the colour of the solution. Hence, a greater amount of diffusion took place. Correspondingly, Vernier Software and Technology Company conducted an experiment to investigate “the direct effect of increasing concentrations of ethanol alcohol on biological membranes.” Their testing process was not as extensive, with the highest concentration trial at 40%. Nevertheless, their final results concluded that the more ethanol added to solution, the greater the extent of biological membrane

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