Egg Diffusion Lab

24 hour time lapse of our Egg Diffusion Lab. Egg on left in corn syrup, egg on right in DH2O pic.twitter.com/wdfujQyBXM

— Mr. Orre's Class (@OrreBiology) October 5, 2016

   In this lab, we left an egg in two different solutions for 48 hours, and later observed the results. One egg was placed in sugar water, and the other in deionized water, and we hypothesized the change in growth of the egg in sugar water based off of our prior knowledge of hypertonacity, where it shrinked due to water loss. As the sugar concentration increased, there were more solutes outside than inside, so the solvents tried to move out of the egg and into the sugar water, attempting to reach a lower concentration. The mass and circumfrence of the egg in sugar water decreased, as shown in the data tables. The solute, the substance being dissolved, which was the sugar, led to a higher concentration in the solution, making it hypertonic. The solvent, the substance the solute is dissolving in, was the water, which was lost as the solute left the egg in the form of passive diffusion (where no energy was exerted).
  A cell's internal enviornment changes as its external enviornment changes as it is constantly trying to reach equilibrium. When the vinegar was added at first, the egg grew, because the water went inside after the membrane of the egg (the shell) dissolved. Then it shrunk back to its normal size as it was placed in the water, and then it shrunk even more when it was placed in sugar water.
  This lab demonstrated the biological principal of passive diffusion, where the cell exerted no energy while moving across the high to low concentration gradient to reach equilibrium.
  A common application of diffusion would be sprinkling water on vegetables in markets. This diffuses the vegetable with water, a low concentration, to rehydrate it, and this keeps it fresh for longer. Sometimes salt is used to melt ice off of roads, because salt's high concentration absorbs the water in the ice, and causes it to melt due to diffusion. The salting on the roads, would most likely dehydrate the plants as it's high concentration would absorb its water storage.
   Based off of this experiment, I would like to test the speeds of the two high and low concentration eggs, to see if they could switch concentrations, or go to their origonal size using different solutions to reach equilibrium.