Potato Chips

large potato chips in the same concentration, in two separate test tubes, the larger one would have been able to diffuse out more or taken in more water molecules, depending on the concentration, because it is has a large inner area and surface area than the smaller ship.

We also made sure that we used the same amount of sucrose solution in each test tube, we done this by measuring out the solution using a burette and measuring cylinders. By making sure that we had exactly the same amount of solution in each test tube it made our results a lot more accurate and fairer. If we had used different amounts of solution in the test tubes it would affect the rate of osmosis taking place. For example if we were dealing with the concentration of 0.2M and we poured 20mls in one test tube and only 5mls in the other it would dramatically effect the results. The one with 20mls of solution in would result in the potato chip being much longer than the ship in only 5mls of 0.2M, because there is a larger volume of water molecules in the 20mls as it is a larger volume of solution which means there will be more diffusing into the potato through the semi-permeable membrane. By using the same amount of solution with every concentration of solution in every test tube it will eliminate the chance of this taking place in the experiments.

There was also the case of deciding how long we would leave the potato ships in the different solutions for. To make it fair we decided to leave them in for the same amount of time, 24 hours, because this would allow the same amount of osmosis to take place in each test tube with every concentration of solution. If we had left one batch of ten test tubes in a solution for 24hours and another of batch of ten test tubes in another solution for 48hours then I would not be able too see the real effect of a concentration on osmosis because the time also is a factor of how much osmosis takes place. I want to see how a concentration of sucrose solution effects the rate of osmosis, and leaving the potato in the solution for different amounts of tie will not allow me to do this as my results will be unfair and biased.

When getting the potato out of the solution I made sure that I dried off the access solution and surface water with filter paper. By drying off the surface area it made sure that when we measured the length of the chip the water didn't effect the measurements. If we had dried some chips and