A group of students are conducting an experiment. Since potatoes contain both sugar and water, the students use them in the experiment. The students cut six equal cubes of potato and weigh them. They place the six cubes into six different beakers containing different concentrations of sugar solutions, then weigh each potato cube after 24 hours and calculate the percent change in mass. The graph below shows the result of their experiment. Which of the statements below is a valid conclusion about this experiment? a The lower the concentration of sugar, the more likely the potato will gain mass. b The higher the concentration of sugar, the more likely the water concentration will be at equilibrium. c The higher the concentration of sugar, the more likely the potato will gain mass. d The lower the concentration of sugar, the less likely the potato will gain mass.

Question

GPT-4o mini · Answer

Based on the experiment described, where potato cubes are placed in varying concentrations of sugar solutions to observe changes in mass due to osmosis, the valid conclusion would be:

a The lower the concentration of sugar, the more likely the potato will gain mass.

This conclusion is supported by the principles of osmosis, where water moves from an area of lower solute concentration (in this case, the potato) to an area of higher solute concentration (the sugar solution). In lower concentration sugar solutions, there are more water molecules compared to sugar molecules, so the potato gains mass as water moves into it.