Egg Osmosis Lab

Intro

The main objective of this experiment is to observe how changing a cell’s environment will affect its mass, which is essentially the principle of homeostasis. Homeostasis means maintaining a balance between an organism, or cell, and its environment. This is shown in this lab because we’ve changed the outside solution that the egg sits in by exposing the eggs to different solutions with different amounts of sucrose solute. By altering each egg’s environment differently, we can expect the eggs in different solutions to change in different ways. This is because of the homeostasis rule, saying the cell, which is the egg, will change in order to maintain a balance with its environment, which is the surrounding solution.

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In this lab, we’ll work with multiple sucrose, or sugar, solutions, and each different solution will have a different concentration of solute, which is the sucrose, dissolved in it, ranging from 0 M (distilled water) to 4 M (corn syrup). Within the four solutions tested, each were different types of solutions. In osmosis, there are three different types of solutions: hypertonic, which is one that has a greater concentration of solute than another solution, hypotonic, which has a lower concentration of solute than another solution, and isotonic, which is a solution that has an equal concentration of solute than another solution. For example, in this lab the solutions with a higher concentration of sucrose, like the 4 M solution, are expected to be an example of a hypertonic solution. This is because the solution the egg is sitting in will have a higher concentration of solute, since it has a high amount of dissolved sucrose, compared to the solution on the inside of the egg, making the inside solution hypotonic. During osmosis, water will always diffuse from high to low concentration over the semipermeable cell membrane, which means that the water would move from the hypotonic solution, whether that is inside the egg

An egg in a hypotonic solution, such as the distilled water in this lab, would have water moving into the egg, since the inside solution has a higher concentration of solute. When the water diffuses into the egg, the egg swells up and gains mass. However, when this happens, cells in animals may end up bursting because of too much water entering the cell, which is called cytolysis. On the other hand, when an egg in a hypertonic solution, like the 4 M corn syrup, water will diffuse out of the egg, since the inside solution has a lower concentration of solute and a higher concentration of water. When water leaves the egg, the egg will undoubtedly begin to lose mass and shrink due to water loss, which is then called