Laboratory Report

Background information

-Living requires change.Matter in an external environment is transformed into

organisms.The question is how does matter transform into organisms? The answer is pretty
simple is through diffusion.All biological membranes are semipermeable because they act as
gateways for materials leaving or entering.They select molecules that can pass through on
the basis of physical properties of substances . Small uncharged molecules such as water
,CO2(carbon dioxide),O2 oxygen move freely through the cell membrane. Other molecules
use diffusion, the process where molecules move from high concentration to low
concentration. Water molecules have a special process which is called osmosis where
molecules move from low concentration to high concentration. Osmosis is very important to
living things such as it transport of nutrients and release of metabolic waste which can be
harmful to our body,and also it stabilizes the internal environment of a living organism by
maintaining the balance between water and intercellular fluid levels.

Question
-What happens as I increase sugar concentration to osmosis in radishes?

Hypothesis

-I hypothesize that as the concentration of sugar increases in the solution the rate of
decrease in weight of the radishes of the radishes will increase. In solution with higher
concentration of sugar ,creating a hypertonic environment ,the movement of water from the
radish cell to the external environment will lead to the reduction in its weight and it will
increase the rate of the reduction in weight. I expect the radish that are in the higher
concentration of sugar like (4g,3g) to have high rate of decrease in weight compared to
the ones that has like has (1g,0g).This hypothesis is based on the principle of osmosis that
we have covered in the class where water molecules move from areas with low
concentration to the areas with high concentration. And I expect this principle in this

experiment that I will be making .

Graph of how it will look like

Grams of sugar Initial grams of Final grams of Mass decrease
the radish the radish percentage (%)
0 grams 10.6 grams 8.2grams 22.64
1 grams 10 .7 grams 7.9 grams 26.57
2 grams 10.8 grams 7.6 grams 29.63
3 grams 10 .4grams 7 grams 32.69
4 grams 10.9 grams 6.9 grams 36.7
5 grams 10 .5grams 6 grams 42.86

I think the graph will look like this because as we increase the concentration of sugar the
rate in decrease of sugar will increase

Variables

-Indepedent variable:The independent variable that I will be using in my experiment is

sugar because if I kept sugar constant there would be no change in the size.I will do this by
adding a gram of sugar in each of the experiment that I will be making I will start with 0g per
125 ml or no sugar up until 4g per 125ml and then at end I will measure the size of the
radish in each beaker ,so probability I will need 5 beakers and increase a gram per of sugar
per 125ml each time.
-Dependent variable:My dependent variable for this experiment is the weight of the radish
because the weight of the radish depends on the concentration of sugar I added in.I will
place two pieces of radish in the same beaker and wait after that measure their weight,to be
more accurate I will do like 2 trials.To measure the weight I will use the analytical balances
and I will take radish and put it on the analytical balance and then measure the weight.

-Controlled variables: My controlled variables are water , the radish size and time.Let’s
start with water. The amount of water should be the same for the whole experiment. This is
essential to ensure that the concentration of sugar remains the primary variable influencing
the radish slices. For instance, if different amounts of water were used, it could inadvertently
impact the sugar concentration, leading to varied and potentially inaccurate results.I will
measure the amount of water by putting water in a beaker and then measure if the water
reaches 150ml it will be the amount of water that I will use.To promote consistency, each
radish will be cut in half. This step ensures uniform exposure to the sugar solutions,
facilitating fair comparisons between different concentrations.The duration of exposure to
sugar solutions will be consistent across all trials. This control is critical as varying the time
could introduce additional factors that might impact the osmotic processes. By keeping the
exposure time constant, the experiment aims to isolate the effects of sugar concentration on
radish size.

Materials

Materials Their use

Beakers To measure the amount of water

Water It will be a solvent

Sugar It will be solute

Radish They will be used to measure how

different concentration of sugar affect
the radishes

Analytical balance To measure the weight of the radishes

before and after the experiment

Labels To name the beaker so that I don’t get

confused
Method

Preparing the Beakers

-Bring five beakers each should be 250ml and then place them in order

-Label each beaker according to the amount of sugar that will be added in so

like this (0g,1g,2g,3g,4g)

Preparing the radishes

-Prepare 10 good radishes

-cut them in halves using knife

Prepare water

-Measure 125ml of distilled water for each beaker. This ensures consistency across all trials.

Assemble the beakers

-Place two radish halves into each labeled beaker containing 125ml of water.

Add the sugar

-Add sugar and make sure that each amount of sugar corresponds to the right beakers as
labeled. So if the beaker is 4g add only 4g not 1g.

Record the time

-After that start recording the time it will be like 30 min

Record the final results

-After 30min carefully remove each radish from each beaker

-after that measure the weight of each radish

-Record the information in the notebook

-Plot the graph of the final results

Analysing and conclusion

-Analyse the graph and draw conclusion on how increasing sugar concentration may affect
the weight of the radishes
Safety precaution

-Wear the lab coat

-Take care of the materials in case something goes wrong and report it.

Table of the results

Table 1:Osmosis in Radishes

Grams of sugar Initial grams (of the Final mass(radishes) Mass increase change
radish) percentage %

0 grams 12.9 14.1 9.3

1 gram 12.6 13.9 10.3

2 grams 12.4 13 4.8

3 grams 12.9 13.7 6.2

4 grams 11.7 13 11.1

5 grams 12.5 13.4 7.2

The graph of the results

Interpreting the data

As you can see on the graph as the concentration of sugar increased the rate of the increase
in weight of the radishes decreased.When there was no sugar in the solution the radishes in
that solution increased weight more than others and this was due to that there were no
sugar that could affect the intake of water by the cells and as we started adding more sugar
in the solution for example as you can see when the sugar concentration was 5grams the
intake of water by the cells was affected and this led to decrease in the rate of gaining
weight , because the amount of water that was gained by the cells was low compared to
others that had no sugar and low concentration of sugar.

Validity of the experiment

The results that I got refuted my hypothesis because my hypothesis was as the
concentration of sugar increases in the solution the rate decrease in weight of the radishes
will increase .While in the results I got was showing that as I increased the sugar
concentration in a solution the rate of increase in weight was decreasing.It was the
opposite.But still the results were not that accurate because when we were measuring the
weight of the radishes at the end of the experiment we could round off the numbers for
example if it was like 1.89g we could say 2g and if we write 2g as you can see it could
increase some rate and also when we were measuring the sugar to add into the solution if
for example the it was supposed to be 4 grams if we measure the results and find it is 4.2 kg
we could say that it’s not a problem and that might have affected the rate of increase in
weight.

Validity of the method

On the validity of it was almost accurate because almost the controlled variable like water I
think was kept accurate we could measure if it is 125ml throught the experiment and the time
was kept the same it was supposed to be 30min but we did it for 20 min but still the time was
kept through the same throught out but the problem was to controll the indepedent variables
and the independent variable where we could round off their weight which could reduce the
accuracy of the overall outcome of the method.
Improvement of the method and extensions

The improvement next time is to make dependent and independent variables more accurate
to avoid inaccurate results and also try to do the experiment for a long time because if we do
it only 20 min we can’t get accurate results as the person who does for 1 hr or 30min and
also increase the number of trials can help us get accurate results because now we only did
it only once but if we had more trials it coud also contribute to accuracy of the results.For
extensions I would like to improve this research on how osmosis affect radishes by also
using other dependent variables like salt ,ethanol,and also I also explorer not only radishes
but other plant cells like potatoes ,cabbages.