Egg Diffusion Lab

The Egg Diffusion Lab

In this lab, we put an egg into vinegar, which dissolved the shell. We took two other eggs (both of them with no shell, just membrane) and placed one into deionized water and the other one into sugar water. We left the eggs for a couple minutes, and then looked at them. The egg in deionized water got slightly bigger, while the one in sugar got smaller. 

While looking at class data, it was common that the egg shrank when put into sugar water. This is because of a process called diffusion. Since the inside of the egg had a higher water content than the outside of the egg, the water moved out of the egg. This lead to an extreme decrease of the size of the egg. On the other hand, the egg size/mass increased when the egg was put in deionized water because the water passed inside the cell.

In this experiment, the cell membrane was pretty much the main reason anything changed in the cell. Diffusion was the main process that we tested in this experiment. This is why eggs are surrounded by a protective shell. The shell protects the egg against diffusion, and also things popping the egg. It also demonstrates how sensitive cells are to their surrounding conditions.

Vegetables are sprinkled with water because the skin of the vegetable can absorb that water. Salt is used to melt ice, but it destroys the plants on the side of the road. Usually there are not too many plants on the edge of a road where they salt the area all the time. 

After doing this experiment, I would like to test what different liquids do to an egg. How would lemon juice vs soap affect an egg? I would also like to test putting salt water on cells, and observing their changes in a microscope. This would be a very interesting way to observe the changes.