Why Do Red Blood Cells Appear Smaller

In, “Movement of Molecules in or Out of Cells” on page 159 to 163, it reads, “A student put a drop of blood on a microscope slide and then looked at the cells under a microscope. Initially the magnified red blood cells looked like little round balls, however after adding a few drops of sugar water to the drop of blood, the student noticed that the cells appeared to become smaller.” Now the question stands, why did the red blood cells appear smaller? There were three possible explanations proposed. Explanation one reads, “Sugar molecules push on the cell membranes and make the cells appear smaller.” Explanation two states,”Water molecules move out of the cell because the concentration of water is greater inside the cell than it is outside the cell.” Finally, explanation three reads, “Sugar molecules enter the cell and take up the place of water. The cells appear smaller because sugar molecules take up less space.

From our observations we believe that the red blood cells appeared smaller because there was a greater concentration of water inside the cell, rather than outside the cell, so the water must have moved across the membrane to help in making the environment isotonic, and furthermore maintaining homeostasis. There was a greater concentration of water inside the cell because there is a higher concentration of sugar outside of the cell. In other words, we support explanation two. To explain that explanation two is correct, I first must go over how we setup the experiment. We took a dialysis bag and filled it with distilled water, then we poured milk into a beaker. Before moving on to anything else, we weighed the initial mass …show more content…
My evidence distinctly defeats explanation one and explanation three. Simply, my data defends and supports the fundamental ideas of diffusion and