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hmarcia's picture

Onions Observations

In the first part of lab, we observed that water bumped into the beads and forced the bead to move (thus proving Einstein's Brownian Motion Theory).  In the second part, we saw the effects of Brownian Motion on an organic entity.  We observed that an onion skin in .1% salt water had rigid cell structures with free-flowing membrane cells.  When placed in 25% salt water, the onion cells appeared to have a shriveled membrane in its center.  When placing the onion cells in distilled H2O, we observed that the onions cells went back to a similar composure like the onion cells in .1% salt water.

When the combining the first part of the lab with the second part, we are able to theorize that the water molecules bump against the salt molecules, which in turn bumps into the onion cell's wall.  This in turn pushes the cell wall closer together, giving it a shriveled appearance.  From this information, we can conclude that the lesser the quantity of salt, the greater the movement of the onion cell's membranes. 

To test our hypothesis, we simply replace salt with other molecules, of similar size of course, and redo the same experiment and see its results. 

-Halima and Herman

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