Osmosis And Diffusion Lab Report

Introduction

In this lab, we studied the effects of how diffusion and osmosis move particles through the different cell membranes. For these functions to be achieved the cells have to be in a state of homeostasis1 which is the ability to maintain a stable environment in an organism. This is achieved through regulating movement of materials through cytoplasm, organelle membranes, and plasma membranes. This movement is the communication within all cells and their external environments. We preformed several experiments in this lab. We determined the effects of tonicity into a liquid medium on cell structure. We observed how diffusion effects cell growth. We watched the process of osmosis occurring in a living animal and plant cell to determine whether a solution was hypotonic or hypertonic from seeing the effects on the live cells.

By doing this we observed both diffusion and osmosis taking place. Diffusion1 is a movement of molecules or other particles from a region where they are more concentrated to a region where they are less concentrated. If the movement is not stopped by anything else, a solute will diffuse until it reaches a steady state. Osmosis1 is the diffusion of water across a selectively permeable membrane. This means that the movement occurs passively if water is moving from a higher concentration to lower concentration. We used both hypotonic and hypertonic solutions. A hypotonic1 solution has a lower concentration of solutes than the cell. A hypertonic solution has a higher concentration of solutes than the cell. Hypotonic uses osmosis to take in water and hypertonic uses osmosis to lose water. In this lab we could better understand how diffusion and osmosis are factors of regulating cell