Egg Lab Report On Egg Osmosis

The egg is an example of an animal cell that is placed in environments of different tonicity. The vinegar was used to dissolve the shell so that we can see the effects when we placed the egg either in a hypertonic or hypotonic solution. Since the egg membrane is semipermeable similar to the cell membrane, it only allows specific substances to pass in and out of the egg membrane down its concentration gradient. In this case, we are trying to measure to the diffusion of water that goes in and out of the egg membrane. This is also known as osmosis. We performed the experiment by placing the egg into two different solutions, the corn syrup and water. The corn syrup is an example of a hypertonic solution while the water is an example of a hypotonic solution. Because of that, the egg has different reactions to the two solutions with different tonicities. When the egg was placed in the water, the water was being poured into the egg membrane, causing it to lysed due to the higher concentration of solute inside the egg membrane. This is a dangerous condition since the egg can easily burst. When the egg was placed into the corn syrup, the water was being extracted outside the egg membrane due to the higher concentration of solute outside the egg membrane and the egg entered a condition known as shrivel. This condition caused the egg size to shrink due the loss of water and can cause the cell to …show more content…
In conclusion, I learned from this experiment that animal cells, similar to the egg, must be placed in the isotonic environment in order to function properly since it has equal amounts of solute and water concentration inside and outside the cell which causes no net movement for the diffusion of water from high to low