Egg Diffusion Lab Conclusion & Analysis

In the egg diffusion lab, we took 2 eggs and placed them in 2 liquids for a few days: deionized water and corn syrup. We hypothesized that the egg in the deionized water would expand and that the egg in the corn syrup would shrink.

When the concentration of sugar (solute) in the external solution was high, water (solvent) left the egg to maintain the proportion of water to sugar. This caused the mass and circumference to decrease. This is proved by the fact that most of the groups' eggs in corn syrup decreased in mass by around 45%, which is a large difference. The change in circumference also hovered around -21%.

A cells internal environment changes depending on its external environment through a process known as "diffusion". Diffusion always moves molecules from areas of high concentration to low concentration. For example, if a large amount of water is outside of the cell, the water will enter the cell until both sides of the membrane have around the same water concentration. However, if a solute like the sugar in corn syrup is unable to pass through the membrane, then water diffuses out of the cell until the ratio of water to sugar is the same on both sides of the cell membrane.

This lab demonstrates the biological principle of diffusion. Diffusion is extremely important to cells and allows for water and nutrients to move in and out of the cell without the use of energy. By putting an egg, essentially a cell, in a hypertonic solution we investigated the effects solute concentration had on a cell.

Fresh vegetables may be sprinkled with water to counteract the natural process of water leaving the plant cells due to diffusion. If water is sprinkled on the vegetables, the concentration gradient would be less steep which would decrease the rate at which water escapes vegetable cells. This helps prevent the vegetables from wilting or becoming squishy. Salting definitely has a detrimental effect on roadside plants. When salt approaches the roots of a plant, it creates a gradient that forces water out of the root cells. This causes the plant to wilt and may eventually result in its death.

After understanding the results of this experiment, I would like to test what would happen if I removed some of the egg white from another egg and injected it with a hypertonic sugar fluid. This egg would then be placed in a beaker of deionized water. I hypothesize that this egg would absorb water until it bursts. If this hypothesis is correct, it would prove that the membrane is semipermeable from both sides.