How Does Alcohol Affect Cell Diffusion

Homeostasis is maintained when a cell reaches equilibrium inside and outside the cell, equilibrium is when the cell balances equally creating a stable environment. This is an important factor for living things because if there isn’t a stable environment this would have a negative effect on the body. A plasma membrane is important to this process it lets things in and out of the cell, the plasma membrane is selectively permeable which means that it only allows certain things inside and outside the cell. Diffusion releases molecules from high concentration to a low concentration, osmosis is another form of diffusion but deals with water the molecules move from a high concentration to a low concentration. The goal of this investigation was to test if the cell gains or loses mass after coming into contact with alcohol after a period of time. The guiding question is “How does alcohol affect the size of cells?” When a cell is reaching homeostasis the percentages of liquids on both sides have to reach equilibrium. When the cell let alcohol in diffusion happened, when the cell …show more content…
Through diffusion the water moved out of the cell trying to create equilibrium and therefore the cells mass decreased. Osmosis also played a role in the investigation it allowed water to move out of the cell because of the unbalanced percentages. The cells mass decreased because the alcohol molecules were too big to pass through the plasma membrane and the water was moving out causing the cell to decrease. Because of the hypertonic solution the water moved out of the cell, a hypertonic solution has a higher concentration of water inside the cell. Other groups accepted the claim that was made during the investigation and agreed with the data that was collected and the evidence to support the