Osmosis in Gummy Bears

Osmosis

Osmosis is a type of diffusion where water molecules go from a high concentration to a low concentration through a semi-permeable membrane. A semi-permeable membrane is something that only lets specific atoms pass through the membrane.

Hypothesis:

I think that the sugar water will be isotonic compared to the gummy bear and there will be no effect on it. They both have a high concentration of sugars which will make them close to equilibrium. The plain water will greatly affect the gummy bear as there are more water molecules present than the sugar and salt beakers. So the water will be drawn into the gummy bear to even out the sugar particles.  I am not sure of what effect the salt water will have on the gummy bear.

Results:

The beaker with the sugar surprisingly had an effect on the solute. The gummy bear's size increased quite a bit.  The sucrose concentration in the gummy bear was hypertonic compared to the concentration of sugar in the water/solvent. This means that there was a lower concentration of water molecules inside the gummy bear than in the water solution. So the water molecules went from a region of high water potential to a region of low water potential to balance out.

The beaker with the plain water was hypotonic to the gummy bear. A lot of the water was transferred into the gummy bear and made it huge. I would say it is a little over 3x bigger than the regular gummy bear. The gummy bear lost a lot of its colour and it became very brittle and easy to break when gently picked up. This tells us that there was a much, much greater concentration of water molecules in the solvent than in the gummy bear,.

Lastly, I found the results quite odd and not at all what I'd thought would happen. The gummy bear in the saltwater actually SHRUNK! It was smaller than the original gummy bear and kept a lot of its colour. The gummy bear shrinks because there are more salt particles in the water than in the gummy bear. The water is drawn out of the gummy to lower the concentration of salt in the water. This means the gummy bear was hypotonic compared to the saltwater.