Biology 2.1 Making Chips

1. Biology 2.1 Making Chips By: Biology 12A

2. What was the experiment about? • The experiment was an investigation on the process of osmosis using different salt solutions to see the change in mass in a potato which will effect the concentration.

3. The independent variable • The independent variable was the salt solutions of different concentrations. The range of the salt solutions was 0.0mol, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9.

4. Dependent Variable • The dependent variable is the final mass of the potatoes which are measured using a weighing scale.

5. Reliability • To ensure reliability in this experiment we used three potato samples in each vial with each salt solution then took averages in our result taking so that there was no random error.

6. My results • My results were both expected and unexpected. I expected that the 0.0mol salt solution would increase the mass of the potato but I didn’t expect that the 0.1mol salt solution would have made the potato have the biggest weight loss, I would have thought that the 0.9mol salt solution would have caused the bigger weight loss.

7. The science • The science behind this experiment is OSMOSIS. Osmosis is the movement of water through a membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

8. What went wrong • When drying some of the potato samples I squeezed some of the potatoes that some of the water had come out which may have made some of the weights vary. • I also think something might have been wrong with the salt solutions because the theory of osmosis means that the 0.9mol salt solution should have caused the most weight loss as it had the lowest concentration of water.

9. Improvements • An improvement I could have made in this experiment would have been to have used more biology terminology in my discussions and evaluation.