Lab report jelly experiment

Biology
Felipe Berea Y3D

This experiment is to find out the speed of diffusion in a block of jelly. This
experiment works by putting a block of jelly made with a phenolphthalein
indicator which turns colorless when it encounters hydrochloric acid. So, when
the block turns colorless you know all the acid had diffused into the agar cells.
Research Question:
how does the size of the block of jelly (in cm³) affect the speed of diffusion (in color change in
seconds)?

Hypothesis:
I think that the rate of diffusion will be faster the smaller the jelly block. The reason I think this
is because the acid has less mass and agar cells to pass through and diffuse so will turn colorless
quicker. So, as the cell size increases, the volume increases faster than the area, because the
volume is being cubed while the area is squared. When there is more volume and less area,
diffusion takes longer and is less efficient. This is because there is a larger area that needs to
receive the substance being diffused, but less area for that substance to enter the cell.

Variables listed and explained:

The independent variable in this experiment will be the size of the block of jelly and this will be
made sure of by measuring each piece. The dependent variable will be the speed of diffusion,
and this will be measured by timing how long it takes for the block of jelly to turn colorless. The
controlled variables in this experiment will be the amount of acid used, the type of jelly and the
shape of the agar jelly.

Material list:
• Safety (lab coat, glasses)
• Stopwatch
• Pen and paper
• Jelly
• Knife
• Petri dish
• Hydrochloric acid

Method:
1. Step one is to put on all the safety gear to prevent acid burns.
2. The next step is to get your paper ready and make a table to write down the results of
the experiment.
3. Then you cut the jelly block 4 times in the middle constantly making it smaller. You
should be left with 5 blocks of jelly with 2 being the same size, one of those 2 you can
discard because it won't be needed.
4. The next step is to place the pieces of jelly into a petri dish and get a stopwatch ready.
5. Then you gently pour the acid into the petri dish and fill it up halfway. Then you start
the timer.
6. After that you write down the exact time when each of the pieces of jellies turn
colorless.
7. When all of the jellies have turned colorless the experiment has finished and you can
carefully discard the acid and jellies.
8. To ensure reliability you should repeat steps 3-6 two more times.

Results:
Table of surface area : volume ratio and time in seconds it took for the block of agar jelly to
diffuse:
 Block Surface area of Volume of Surface area : Time in seconds
block/cm2 block/cm3 volume ratio
(surface area /
volume)
A 10 2 5:1 915

B 6 1 6:1 681

C 4 0,5 8:1 201

D 1,5 0,125 12:1 189

X axis: surface area : volume ratio

Y axis: time (seconds)
I chose to use a line graph because in my opinion it looks the best and represents the data
clearly since you can clearly see the increase of each column. Also, if I were to ask what time it
would be between block A and B I would be able to see that but with a bar graph or a pie chart I
wouldn’t.

Conclusion:
My hypothesis ended up being correct. As the surface area : volume ratio decreased the time in
seconds it took the acid to diffuse the agar jelly increased. This is proven by comparing the 12:1
ratio to the 5:1 ratio. You can see that the largest ratio took 189 seconds to diffuse the smallest
ratio took 915 seconds to fully diffuse. Therefore, the volume counteracts the increase in area,
so the higher the surface area : volume ratio the faster the diffusion.
So, the answer to my research question ¨how does the size of the block of jelly (in cm³) affect
the speed of diffusion (in color change in seconds)? ¨ is that the bigger the size (in cm³) the
slower the rate of diffusion.

Discussion:
The reliability of this experiment isn't very good because the experiment was only done once.
So, it may not be very accurate. Also, it is hard to know if the block of agar jelly was cut
precisely because it is hard to cut the slippery jelly with precision using a knife.

The experiment could be improved by doing it multiple times to see if the data matches and
dividing the added-up numbers by the number of times you did it.

Sources:
Text:
"Agar Cell Diffusion Lab Report." PaperAp.com, 27 Nov 2019, http://paperap.com/paper-on-
agar-cube-lab-report/
Samprovalaki, K., et al. “Investigation of the Diffusion of Dyes in Agar Gels.” Journal of Food
Engineering, Elsevier, 24 Mar. 2012,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0260877412001665.
“How Does Surface Area to Volume Ratio Affect the Rate of Diffusion?: Socratic.” Socratic.org,
21 Oct. 2015, https://socratic.org/questions/how-does-surface-area-to-volume-ratio-
affect-the-rate-of-diffusion.
Gupta, Riti. “Four Things That Affect Rate of Diffusion.” Sciencing, 16 Feb. 2020,
https://sciencing.com/four-things-affect-rate-diffusion-8348637.html.

Editors, By: BD, et al. “Diffusion - Definition, Examples and Types.” Biology Dictionary, 4 Oct.
2019, https://biologydictionary.net/diffusion/.
“Agar Cell Diffusion.” Exploratorium, 2 Oct. 2020, https://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/agar-
cell-diffusion.

Images:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xuG4ZZ1GbzI/hqdefault.jpg .