All living things are made of cells. One part of the cell is the cell membrane which allows molecules like oxygen and water in and out of the cell. The red blood cell is the most abundant cell in the human body whose job is to transport oxygen from the lungs to the cells of the body. Something unique to the red blood cells is that they can change shape. This allows them to squeeze through capillaries without breaking. They also change shape in response to the environment. My task is to design and carry out an experiment to determine which of the two explanations about the appearance of RBC’s after exposure to distilled water is the most valid or acceptable from a scientific perspective. The guiding question is, why do the red blood cells appear bigger after being exposed to distilled water?
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This will act as our red blood cell. We did this again to leave us with 2 dialysis tubes full of water. We then filled one cup with 250mL of distilled water and another cup with 250mL of starch. We weighed the dialysis tubing one at a time then dropped one in the cup of water and one in the cup of starch. We repeated these steps except instead of water in the dialysis tubing we put starch. We left the tubing in the cups for a total of 24 hours and then took them out of the cups and weighed them again in order to figure out the change of mass of our “cells.” The data I collected was the dialysis tubing filled with starch that was submerged in water grew by 0.44 grams. The data helped me answer the guiding question because it proved that red blood cells appear larger when exposed to distilled water because the concentration of water is greater outside of the cell than it is inside the cell. As a result, water fills the cell and makes it appear
This will act as our red blood cell. We did this again to leave us with 2 dialysis tubes full of water. We then filled one cup with 250mL of distilled water and another cup with 250mL of starch. We weighed the dialysis tubing one at a time then dropped one in the cup of water and one in the cup of starch. We repeated these steps except instead of water in the dialysis tubing we put starch. We left the tubing in the cups for a total of 24 hours and then took them out of the cups and weighed them again in order to figure out the change of mass of our “cells.” The data I collected was the dialysis tubing filled with starch that was submerged in water grew by 0.44 grams. The data helped me answer the guiding question because it proved that red blood cells appear larger when exposed to distilled water because the concentration of water is greater outside of the cell than it is inside the cell. As a result, water fills the cell and makes it appear