A student designed an investigation to study osmosis using sweet potato cylinders.
The student placed 50 cm3 of sucrose solution of different concentrations into six different beakers. They then added one sweet potato cylinder of identical mass and surface area to each beaker. After 8 hours, the cylinders were removed and the volume of solution remaining in each beaker was measured.
The results are shown in the table below:
| Beaker | Concentration of sucrose solution (mol/dm3\text{mol/dm}^3mol/dm3) | Volume of solution at start (cm3\text{cm}^3cm3) | Volume of solution after 8 hours (cm3\text{cm}^3cm3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.0 | 50 | 45 |
| 2 | 0.1 | 50 | 48 |
| 3 | 0.2 | 50 | 52 |
| 4 | 0.3 | 50 | 55 |
| 5 | 0.4 | 50 | 55 |
| 6 | 0.5 | 50 | 55 |
Define the term osmosis.
Name the independent variable and one controlled variable in this investigation.
Use the data to estimate the concentration of the cytoplasm in the sweet potato cells, explaining your reasoning.
Identify all the beakers in which the sweet potato cylinders lost water.