Osmosis Is Serious Business

Osmosis Is Serious Business!

by

Troy R. Nash

Department of Biology

Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC

Questions-Too Much of a Good Thing

1. The extra fertilizer created a hypertonic environment around the roots of the corn

____/ 2 pts. What sort of environment (hypotonic, hypertonic, isotonic) did the extra fertilizer create around the roots of the corn?

2. The extra fertilizer caused the soil to become hypertonic which cause water to diffuse out of the corn into the soil. This caused the crops to die from lack of water.

____/ 2pts. Keeping in mind your answer to the previous question, what do you believe caused the corn plants to wilt and eventually die?

3. If Michael would have told his dad what he had done, two things could have possibly been done.. One option would have been the removal of as much of the extra fertilizer as possible to reduce the chance of the fertilizer becoming hypertonic. The other option would to be to overwater the crops so the environment would be isotonic and no diffuse would take place because of the equal concentrations of the solutions inside and outside of the plant cells. I think just telling his father would have saved a lot of heartache and trouble.

____/ 2 pts If Michael’s mistake had been caught earlier, is there anything that could have been done to prevent the corn from dying?

Questions-Too Little Too Late

1. The distilled water cause the patient’s bloodstream to become a hypotonic environment .

____/2pts. What problem did the distilled water in the patient’s bloodstream create?

2. As a result of the patient’s blood stream becoming hypotonic, the red blood cells to swell and burst because of the high osmotic pressure from the distilled water (i.e. the bright red fluid in the Foley catheter bag)

____/2 pts What happed to the patient’s blood cells as a result?