Proving Osmotic Properties within Potatoes

Enzo / 10C
INTRODUCTION
Osmosis is the movement of water through a semi permeable membrane. This
movement does not require energy, because it is powered by diffusion. Diffusion itself is
the movement of substances from a higher concentration to a lower one. Therefore, this
movement creates balance and homeostasis within the cell, because it maintains the
balance of water concentration between the inside and outside part.
Cells are abundant in every multicellular organism, including potatoes. In this
experiment, we are going to prove the osmotic properties of potatoes. The slices of it will
be submerged in 2 samples of water, both with different amounts of salt. Our guess is:
when salt is mixed with water, the potato submerged will shrink and be hypertonic due to
osmosis. With different samples of water, the cells in the potato will experience different
osmotic pressures, which results the potato itself in having different mass and texture.
PROCEDURE
Materials:
-2 Slices of potatoes, 35g each
-2 250ml Beakers with 150 ml of water each
-4 tsp of salt
-scale
-timer
-teaspoon

Steps on creating experiment:

1. Measure the weight of 2 potato slices with the scale. Make sure that it has the
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same mass in order to make it easier to calculate

Prepare both 250ml Beakers on the table, each filled with 150 ml of water
Add 4 tsp of salt into one of the 250 ml beaker
Stir the beaker using the teaspoon in order to dissolve the salt
Prepare the timer to count for an hour
Submerge 2 slices of potatoes (each weighing 35g) into each 250ml beakers

respectively (turn on the timer)

7. After an hour, remove the potatoes from the beakers. Re-measure the weight of
the potato slices.
8. Observe the weight and texture differences before and after submerging the potato
slices into the water.

DATA TABLE

Water
Salt
Weight

Before
After

Sample 1

Sample 2

150 ml
0 tsp
35g
35g

150 ml
4 tsp
35g
33g

Texture

Before
Firm
Firm
After
Hardened
Softened
From the data that we included in this table, we can see the correlation between

the potatoes properties and the amount of salt in the solution. As we can see, adding salt
causes the potato to shrink and lose weight.
RESULT
After listing all of the data and interpreting it, we have come up to a conclusion.
The slice of potato that was submerged in normal water has hardened in texture, while the
one in salty water became softer and loses some of its water. As we can see, we just
proved that there could be osmosis happening in potatoes. So as a result, the experiment
has proven our hypothesis right: osmosis does affect the water inside and outside of the
potato, and different salt amounts in water can create different characteristics out of the
potato, caused by different osmotic pressures.