How Do The Results Relate To Diffusion In Plant Cells?

There are little pores in every plant cell, and molecules diffuse in and out of these pores in order to adequately suit the cell and keep it alive. In this lab, we set up different environments in order to test which solution would be isotonic for the different plant cells. Since cells tend to lose mass in hypertonic solutions and gain mass in hypotonic solutions, it is easy to determine what type of environment the vegetable was in by looking at the percent of change. For example, the percent of change in the potato when in the solution containing 0.8 moles of sucrose was -26%. This indicates that, since the change was negative, this solution was hypertonic, as the water is leaving the cell in order to replace the lack of water in the area surrounding it.