Investigating the effect of changing salt concentration on osmosis in potato tissue
Introduction
I am going to investigate the effects on the weight of a 5 x 30mm King Edward potato chip when osmosis has occurred. Osmosis is the transfer of water from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration through a semi-permeable membrane. To do this I am going to put the chips in different salt concentrations, and compare the weight before and after.
Variables
The variables in this experiment will be :
The salt concentration
The weight before and after
The exact time when put in
The heat of the chips
Fair Test
To make this a fair test, I am going to make sure the chips are in for exactly 20 minutes each, make sure the potato is dry before weighing, therefore you are not weighing the external water. Also I will make the length of the chips as accurate as I can, and make sure that I do not handle the chips much so I won't affect the heat.
Preliminary Experiment
We are doing an experiment to prove osmosis. To do this we are creating some chips that are on average 5mm in diameter by 30mm in length and are going to place them in salt and water solutions with different concentrations of salt. The solutions will start at 0% Salt : 100% Water and work up to 90% Salt : 10% Water. To do this experiment we need the correct apparatus, which is :
White Tile - To protect the desk
Cork Borer - To cut the potato chips out
Stop Clock - To accurately measure the time
Different Salt solutions - To test the chips in
King Edward Potatoes - To make the chips
Scalpel - To cut the potatoes...