Biology Plasmolysis Coursework - 1680 Words

Intro I am going to do an investigation into what concentration of sucrose solution would cause â€Å"Incipient Plasmolysis†. Theory Plasmolysis is the result of a (in particular) plant cell which has lost vast amounts of water. When this happens, turgor pressure within the cell has decreased to the point where the cytoplasm of the cell membrane peels away from the cell wall. When this begins to happen it is called Incipient Plasmolysis and when the cytoplasm is almost completely gone it is call â€Å"full/complete† Plasmolysis. Plasmolysis is only possible if the cell is placed in a hypertonic solution, which is a solution where the water external to the cell has more solutes than within the plant cell and because of that the water potential†¦show more content†¦Also during the experiment I have to make sure that I don’t mix both liquids. For example, pouring water into the cylinder that contain-s/ed sucrose. In the experiment I cannot write down the result as a â€Å"cell count†, as all red onion skin cells are different (e. g. size, arrangement.). Using the equation above, I will record this as a percentage. If a result doesn’t seem to be consistant with the rest by being either too high or too low then I will repeat the test on that concentration to get a more accurate result. I am going to analyse my results by observing how many cells have had their protoplasm’s peeled away from the cell wall. For acquiring the percentage of that I will use this equation: For acquiring the percentage of cells plasmolysed I will use this equation: Total No. of plasmolysed cells (e. g. 39) divided by the Total No. of cells (e. g. 56). Then multiply this number by a 100 (e. g. 39 divided by 56 multiplied by a 100 = 69.64%). This would be the percentage of cells plasmolysed. Prediction The prediction is, I believe that the highest concentration of sucrose would cause the most cells to be plasmolysed and the lower concentration would obviously produce the least amount of cells being plasmolysed. This prediction is in line with the theory of plasmolysis. Analysis Obtaining: This is my table of results, which also shows the amount of water (H2O) sucrose used to make the different concentrations of sucrose. As you can see I did 3