OSMOSIS - SCI & TECH
News: Osmosis:
fluid transfer
What's in the news?
● Ocean
currents, subatomic particles, galaxies almost everything is moving from one
place to another.
● There
are different kinds of movement, with different purposes. One type of movement
is osmosis.
Osmosis:
● Osmosis
is a process where fluid moves from a place of higher concentration to a lower concentration through a semipermeable
membrane.
● For
example - you fill a container with a concentrated sugar solution on one side
and a diluted sugar solution on the other of a semipermeable membrane.
● Water
molecules will travel from the diluted solution to the concentrated one through
the membrane until the concentration of water is equal on both sides. This is
osmosis.
Studies on Osmosis:
● A
German plant physiologist named Wilhelm
Pfeffer first thoroughly studied osmosis in 1877, after various other
studies by other scholars on leaky membranes.
● This
process is incredibly important in biology, where liquids move from one part of
an organism to another through cellular membranes that are semipermeable.
● In
trees, osmosis is part of a pumping
system that transports water and nutrients up from the roots to the leaves.
● Osmosis
can be seen in many real-life scenarios, such as in the swelling of raisins or
other seeds when they are soaked in water, and in the pruning or wrinkling of
your fingers after taking a long bath.
Go back to basics:
Reverse Osmosis:
● Reverse
osmosis (RO) is a water purification technology that removes larger particles from drinking water using a semipermeable
membrane.
● In
reverse osmosis, an applied pressure is used to overcome osmotic pressure,
allowing pure water to flow from a region of high solute concentration
(hypertonic) to a region of low solute concentration (hypotonic).