Egg Diffusion Lab

The question that was asked in the egg diffusion lab was why does a cell's internal environment change as it's external environment changes? To test this, we soaked to eggs in vinegar water for a few days and then placed one in sugar water and the other one in plain water for 2 days. When we collected the data after those 2 days, we discovered that the circumference of the egg in sugar water had gone down by 17.65% and it's mass had gone down by 48% and the one in water had expanded. The reason the egg in the sugar water deflated was because of diffusion. The solution was hypertonic: there was more solute outside of the cell, which caused water(solvent) to exit the egg to balance out the solution. When the water started to exit the egg, the egg lost mass which caused it to deflate.

As we have seen in the egg lab, when we placed the egg in sugar water, the water left the egg to balance out the solution surrounding it. This shows that when a cell's internal environment changes so does it's outside environment, because when the cell lost water, the environment around it gained water.

This lab demonstrates the biological principle of diffusion when the solvent spreads around to the environment around them. In the case with the sugar water solvent moved out of the cell (hypertonic), but there are other types of diffusion as well such as hypotonic and isotonic. Hypotonic is when solvent moves into the cell and isotonic is when the cell is already in balance. The principle of diffusion can be applied to real life as well. For an example when it snows, salt is poured on the road to melt the ice, however when the salt lands on plants it  can kill it. This is because the solvent (water) from inside the plant comes outside in order to balance the level of salt around it, which dehydrates the plant.

After doing this lab, I would like to do some further testing. For an example, I have wondered if the egg was put in a highly hypotonic solution, would it cause the egg to burst? When a solution is hypotonic, solvent goes into the cell to achieve equilibrium, so I want to test if there is a breaking point of the cell that causes it to rupture.