Chung 1

Lani Chung Mr. Nakamura Biology HL Period 2B 4 February 2012 Diffusion through Membranes Lab Analysis Questions 1. What conclusion can you draw from the data in Table 2? When the concentration of salt increased from 1% to 5% and then to 10% concentration, the rate of diffusion consistently increased by about 2 mg/L/s at each step. This might be attributed to the way diffusion occurs faster when there is a higher concentration inside or outside of a membrane because a greater amount of molecules are required to flow across the membrane for equilibrium to be reached. Thus there is a direct correlation between salt concentration and the rate of diffusion across a membrane: As salt concentration increases, the rate of diffusion increases. 2. How did your conclusion compare to your prediction for Part I? Can you account for any differences? My prediction proved to be correct as I predicted that as salt concentration increases, the rate of diffusion will increase because greater concentrations of salt will need to flow into the membrane. Just as I had predicted, the results showed that as the salt concentration was gradually increased from 5-10%, the rate of diffusion had also increased steadily. 3. If the rates in any of the three experiments varied in Part I, calculate how much faster each rate was compared to that for the 1% salt solution. For instance, if the rate of the 1% solution was 1 s/s, then the rate of diffusion for the 10% solution would be (5/1) five times the rate of the 1% salt solution.

Chung 2

In the 1% salt concentration test the rate of diffusion was about 1 mg/L/s, in the 5% it was about 3 mg/L/s, and in the 10% it was about 5 mg/L/s. With these rounded estimates, you can say that the rate of the 5% salt concentration test was about three times that of the 1% salt concentration test and the rate of the10% salt concentration test was about five times that of the 1% salt concentration test. 4. Compare the ionic concentration of pure water with a sugar water solution. How do you account for this? The ionic concentration of water is 572 mg/L while the ionic concentration of sugar solution is 506 mg/L. This can be due to the fact that the water that was tested was not purified or distilled. Since tap water normally has some dissolved molecules, it is quite possible that the conductivity probe detected the ions found in the water. However, if the water had been distilled like it was supposed to, there is a great likelihood that the sugar solution would have a higher ionic concentration than that of the water. This is because sugar ions would be present in the sugar solution while no ions would be present in the distilled water. 5. What conclusion can you draw from the data in Tables 3 and 4? Through the data in tables 3 and 4, I can conclude that sugar can be an inhibitor as it prevented the 5% salt concentration from diffusing through the membrane since the rate of diffusion had seen a decrease from 3.1946 mg/L/s to 2.5076 mg/L/s. I can also infer that the ionic concentration of a solution can have an impact on the rate of diffusion of a substance through a membrane.