Investigating Osmosis: Effect of Salt Concentration on Osmosis in Cucumber Cells

Abstract

The phenomenon of osmosis causing water to travel across selectively permeable barriers in order to balance solute concentrations across barriers is an important feature in biological environments (Lodish, Berk, & Zipursky, 2000). The objective of the lab was to determine how different molar concentrations of salt solutions containing cucumber slices will affect the amount of osmosis occurring between cucumber cells and their surrounding environment. We hypothesized that if there is a higher concentration of salt solution inside the cell, then the mass of the cucumber will decrease because the salt concentration in the surrounding environment is greater than the salt concentration within the cell, causing water to flow out of the cell via osmosis. The experiment was conducted by placing slices of cucumber in water in 0.0M, 0.25M, 0.50M, 0.75M, and 1.0M salt concentrations and calculating the percent change in mass for use in statistical analysis. One-way ANOVA was performed and yielded a statistically significant p-value less than 0.0001, which allowed us to reject the null hypothesis. This indicates that as salt  concentration increases, the mass of the cucumbers decreases as a result.