Osmosis- Evaluation + Conclusion

Conclusion and Evaluation

Conclusion

In our test we put six different sliced up potatoes chips in solutions. The solution was different concentration of salt and water, one was 5% sugar, one 10%, one 15%, one 20% and one 30% salt concentration. We measured the mass of the potatoes chip before and after we put it into the solution. To keep the experiment fair we only changed one variable which was the salt concentration.

The results that we got showed the chip went up in mass for 0% salt concentration and 5% salt concentration but for 10%, 15%, 20% and 30% it went down in mass. This shows the higher the concentration of salt the higher the drop in mass. This happened because the potato slices in the 0% and 5% salt concentration became turgid which means it had swollen and became hard. This occurred because of the process called osmosis in which plant cells take up water and they start to swell, but the cell wall prevents them from bursting.

Evaluation

In my opinion the experiment was very successful, went according to plan and produced a lot of good results. The timing, weighing of the chip before and after the experiment, measuring correct amount of salt solution all were correct and made the test very fair.

On the other hand it think that we repeated the experiment we could improve it by repeating the experiment at least three times to see if all results were around the same which would have improved the reliability of the results. Another way we could improve the experiment is by increasing the time that the potato chips stay in the salt solution to allow more osmosis to happen and then giving us better results because it would show bigger differences between the different salt solution concentrations.

I think that the experiment wasn't exactly accurate because it is nearly possible to keep the potato chips surface area exactly the same which means slight differences in the rate that osmosis occurs which can cause slight differences in the results.

I think the experiment was fairly accurate as we only had two anomalies in the results which were in ten percent