STUDY OF OSMOSIS ALONG A FREE-ENERGY
             GRADIENT USING SUCROSE AND DIALYSIS TUBING
             Osmosis is diffusion of water across a differentially permeable membrane in
             living organisms and is vital to the functioning of living cells. Osmosis can be simulated by using dialysis tubing; each bag represents an individual cell. This experiment was to determine the flow of osmosis in various types of environments: hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic. In order to do this, each dialysis bag was filled with 10 ml of 1%, 25%, or 50% sucrose respectively, weighed, and then placed in two beakers of 50% or 1% sucrose concentrations. The movement of water was tracked by weighing the bags 4 times in one hour. It was found that bags with a lower concentration of sucrose than the environment (Bag A) lost weight. Bags with higher concentrations of sucrose (Bags C&D) gained weight. The bag with the same concentration as the beaker (Bag B) also gained weight. Thus, water moved from areas of low sucrose concentration to areas of high sucrose concentration, which supports the hypothesis that osmosis moves from hypotonic solutions to hypertonic solutions.
             The cell is the basic unit of life. Without cells, we would not exist. To study life, one must first start at the foundation of life: the cell. For a cell to exist there must be something, some sort of structure, which regulates the flow of materials and liquids into and out of the cell. For both prokaryotic, (bacteria,) and eukaryotic, (all other organisms,) cells, that structure is called the plasma membrane. And that regulation is passive transport, which relies heavily on a little thing called osmosis.
             Essentially, osmosis is the passive transport of water. Passive transport means that the molecules can pass through the membrane from state of high free-energy to a stable state of low free-energy without external forces. For osmosis to occur, there must be some sort of difference in fr...