Potato Salt Hypothesis

Faith Raether

November 19, 2013

Science- P.5

Formal Lab Report

Salt Water Effect on Potato Cores

I. Question

Which, if any, of these seawater concentrations would have been safe for the sailor to drink?

II. Hypothesis

If we put the potatoes in different concentrations of seawater (0%, .4%, .8%, 1.2%, 1.6%, and 2%) then the potato put in the highest concentration of seawater (2%) will begin to discolor and fall apart while the potato put in the lowest (0%) concentration of seawater won’t discolor and fall apart because the seawater with the 2% concentration will diffuse into the potato causing it to break down and discolor faster than the potato in the lower concentration of seawater.

III. Introduction

A cell is the smallest functioning unit in an organism, is usually has one or more nuclei that’s surrounded by cytoplasm and all together it’s covered by a membrane. The membrane that surrounds the cytoplasm where substances can pass in and out of the cell making the cell membrane semi-permeable because that’s when only certain small molecules are able to pass through. Molecules can get across the cell many different ways; one way is through diffusion which is when the net movement of a substance will go down in concentration and will continue to go down until it reaches a dynamic equilibrium. A way that water can get across the cell membrane is through osmosis which is the diffusion of water across a semi-permeable membrane.

Diffusion is the movement or particles along a concentration gradient and it’s also the net movement of particles down the concentration gradient, and it’s also a type of passive transport, it’s a net movement of molecules in and out of the cell across the cell membrane along a concentration gradient. Osmo...

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...ore reliable if it were possible to do more trials to make sure that the data that was found was correct. This experiment could’ve been more reliable if some mistakes weren’t made like, the inaccuracy of weighing and measuring the potatoes. This could have affected the results by throwing off all the data and giving numbers that were nowhere near accurate. Another mistake that could’ve been made was the amount of solution put into each test tube. Some of the test tubes may have had to little or not enough of its solution. Some ways to fix both of these problems would be to weigh and measure each potato core more than once which is not what was done. A way to fix the inaccuracy of the amount of salt water put into each test tube would be to measure the solutions into a different container to make sure it’s an accurate measurement, then pouring it into the test tube.