Egg Diffusion Lab Questions

     In the Egg Diffusion Lab, we answered the question "How and why does a cell's internal environment change, as it's external environment changes?"  We then tested this by putting an egg in deionized water and another egg in corn syrup.  After letting the egg sit for one or two days, the egg was soaked in vinegar to cause the membrane to harden.  Then after another few days, the egg in deionized water increased while the egg in the corn syrup decreased in size.

     As the sugar concentration increased, the egg started to shrink in both mass and circumference.  The process on what happened on the egg is known as diffusion.  Diffusion is when there is an unequal balance of solutes to solvents so the solutes need to move in or out of the cell.  It also takes no effort which is known as passive transport.  This causes the cell to either shrink in size or increase in size because of higher concentration or lower concentration.  For example, the corn syrup had more solutes than the egg so the solutes in the corn syrup would transfer to inside the egg, changing the shape of the egg.

     The cell's internal environment changes as the external environmental changes because the cell needs to adapt to the new environment.  For example, a person would sweat if the temperature outside is getting too hot for the body to cool down.  The cell changes by making adjustments such as diffusion to maintain an equilibrium.

     This lab demonstrated diffusion because of of the eggs grew and one of the eggs shrank.  We learned that the reason why was because of diffusion.  The egg in deionized water grew because the deionized water was rushing into the egg to maintain equilibrium while the egg in the corn syrup was rushing out to maintain the concentration level of both outside and inside the egg, which is known as hypertonic solution.

     The fresh vegetables are sprinkled with water because the water causes the vegetables to diffuse because there is more concentration on one side than the other.  Also, the salt on the ice causes the ice to melt because the salt causes the ice to diffuse and maintain equilibrium, which will make the product different.  I would want to test other kinds of solutions thicker than corn syrup and less dense than the deionized water because I want to see how much more the different types of solutions would effect the egg.