Higher Concentration of Sucrose Lowers the Mass of a Potato Independent Variable: Concentration of Sucrose used Dependent Variable: Mass of each Potato after Experiment Constant: Size of Potato being used at room temperature Introduction We learned about hypertonic and hypotonic environments before this lab as well as what takes place during osmosis. Do potatoes loose or gain mass when soaked in specific solutions such as sugar or salts? Sugar is a large molecule and has low permeability. Potatoes are a starch which means it is composed of many polysaccharides, therefor has low permeability. Salts are also molecules with low permeability. The potato goes through the process of osmosis by moving water from a high concentrated …show more content…
The weight each potato slice was obtained using electronic balance scale. Each beaker was then filled with 200mL of each of the different Sucrose concentration (200 mL of 5% in one and 200mL of 10% in the other). Each beaker was then labeled with the percentage of sucrose it contained for data purposes. Potato 1 was placed in the 200mL of 5% Sucrose and Potato 2 was place in 200 mL of 10% Sucrose. A timer was set for 20 minutes once the potatoes were placed in the beakers. The potatoes were removed from the beakers after the 20 minute period. Each potato was weighed once more on the electronic balance scale to obtain the final mass. The data was recorded for each potato and the amount of sucrose they were placed in. The experiment was only done once. Results The potatoes were placed into a hypertonic solution (sucrose) which caused the potatoes to lose mass and shrink as water left the potato. Osmosis took place by moving water from the potato in the sucrose solution to try and reach a balance with the potato and the solution. There was no control (H2O) used in this experiment as there should have been, so there is no data for that.