This entire week our class has been observing the process of osmosis. Osmosis is the passing of water through a membrane….in order to demonstrate this process we used huevos (eggs). We took four eggs and submerged them in four different liquids.
- Water
- Salt Water
- Water (red food coloring)
- Vinegar
Our goal was to discover how these different types of liquids affect these eggs….the effect we were looking for was circumference. By measuring the circumference were we able to see which type of liquid the egg was more likely to absorb through osmosis.
The conclusion….the vinegar egg absorbed the most liquid. This is because the acidity of the vinegar actually dissolved the hard shell around the egg. Leaving only the membrane and allowing it to expand a greater amount because there was no shell to stop it from doing so.
Above is a video of myself and a student observing the vinegar egg. Notice that the egg is almost see-through, this is because the shell is gone and all that remains is a thin membrane…..which turns out is very squashy and very delicate.
Mr. McClung