Question

diffusion experiment: my experiment was to cut an agar cube into 64 pieces and place it into different volumes of water. we placed it into 200 mL ( slope of 24) , 600 mL (slope of 12) , and 800 mL (slope of 8). The slope is from the graph, its rate of diffusion graph from each volume.

a. which had the largest affect on the rate of diffusion?

b) Based on your experiments, discuss at least two adaptations that affect diffusion in living organisms (physiological, structural, or behavioral features that evolved due to a selective advantage that was based on diffusion) . Do these match with the factors you identified in a?

Answer 1

First of all we need to understand the relationship between surface of the cube and the volume of water and diffusion rate depend on the surface area (cubes) and the volume of water, if the ration is higher then rate of diffusion would be higher and if ration is lower then diffusion would be lower too.So slope 8 will have maximum diffusion and slope 24 will have minimum.

		cm3	cm3 (ml)	ratio
	Slope 24	24	200	8.333333333
	Slope 12	12	600	50
	Slope 8	8	800	100
Suppose slope value in the graphs depicting the volume of agar blocks (cubes) in cm3, which are placed in different of volume of water

Diffussion is an very important physiological present in all living organisms, by this method only we get maximum energy that diffuses in the intestine and we get amino acids, glucose etc. By this process only lots of molecules/ions move in or out in the biological system including in unicellular organism to bacteria also. In this process (diffusion) ions move from higher concentration to the lower concentration through a concentration gradient. The best suited example is resin, when you keep in water or milk then sugar molecule will move from inside to outside resin and eventually resin will swell up.