TRANSPORT MECHANISM EXPERIMENT

The first stage of the experiment was to soak the egg in vinegar. The shell completely
disappears. This reaction gives off carbon dioxide so if you were paying attention you will have
seen bubbles coming off the egg as soon as it was added to the vinegar.

So after soaking in vinegar I noticed that the egg increases a little in size. This is
because the water in the vinegar can enter the egg through the membrane, moving from the
higher water concentration in vinegar to the lower concentration in the egg.

When I put the egg in colored water, it grows in size a lot more due to the much larger
water concentration gradient across the membrane. If you add food coloring to the water you
can see the process of osmosis in action as the colored water passes into the egg. Water is
known as hypotonic, very dilute and contains more water than the egg.

But when I placed the egg in water contained salt I saw the opposite of treatment 1.
There is a much higher water concentration in the egg than in the salted water, so water will
pass in the opposite direction. This means that the egg will shrink in size. The salted water is a
hypertonic liquid,. very concentrated with not much water compared to the egg.