A student is studying the movement of water molecules across a semipermeable membrane. The student fills several bags with a 0.6 g/L salt solution. The bags are only permeable to water. The student places those bags into different concentrations of salt water in a beaker. The concentrations are: 0.2 g/L, 0.4 g/L, 0.6 g/L, 0.8 g/L and 1.0 g/L. The student waits for 30 minutes and then observes the changes to the bag in each beaker.

Question

Which of the beakers would show the most amount of water movement into the bag?

Answer 1

To determine which beaker would show the most amount of water movement into the bag, we need to consider the principle of osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane from an area of lower solute concentration to an area of higher solute concentration.

In this experiment, the bags have a salt concentration of 0.6 g/L and are placed in beakers with varying salt concentrations:

• 0.2 g/L
• 0.4 g/L
• 0.6 g/L
• 0.8 g/L
• 1.0 g/L

The beakers with the lower salt concentrations (0.2 g/L and 0.4 g/L) have a lower solute concentration compared to the 0.6 g/L inside the bags. Consequently, water will move from the beaker (where there is less salt) into the bags (where there is more salt), resulting in an influx of water into the bags.

Among these, the beaker with the lowest concentration (0.2 g/L) would have the highest osmotic pressure difference compared to the 0.6 g/L bags, leading to the most significant movement of water into the bags.

Therefore, the beaker that would show the most amount of water movement into the bag is the one with the 0.2 g/L salt solution.