I need help with this!?

Question

i have to pictures,
a picture of a wilted leafy plant, and leafy plant that is alive,

the question is... Which of the plants pictured below was given water mixed with sialt, and which one was given with pure water? Explain how you know , and be sure to use the word osmosis in it..
(this is from the holt and science technology science book)

I think the wilted one has salt
and the other non wilted one has pure water

am i right? what do you think and why?

thanx for the help!

Answer 1

You are correct --- the wilted one got the salt water... And what happens is this: Put a teaspoon of salt in your mouth, in the cheek between your teeth and your cheek. Before doing that, feel the cheek cells with your tongue....the cheek tissue is smooth.... Water will be pulled from your cheek cells that are right next to the salt. After a minute, spit it out, and quickly rinse your mouth. Feel with your tongue how crinkly your inside cheek cells are.... water was pulled out of them into your mouth.... The same will happen in you drink salty water... water from your surrounding tissues will be pulled into your stomach, and away from your blood supply, dumped into your stomach, and you become thirstier than you were before you had drunk the salt water.... that is why sailors cannot drink sea water... it will kill them faster than if they did not drink it... The process of transferring liquid -- usually water -- from one side of a membrane---any membrane -- cheek cells, stomach cells or plant cells... to the other side is called osmosis..

This is what happened when you gave a plant salty water... the water is drawn up into the plant, but the xylem and phloem --- the water transportation system in plants----pulls water away from the leaves, leaving them wilted....

Helpful?

Answer 2

I think you are right. It's really hard to explain osmosis, but how it works is the water always trys to equal out the concentrations between two membranes (pretending that the outside of the plant root is a membrane). If one side of the membrane is saltier, then water will move from the less salty side to the more salty side to try to equal out the concentrations of water.

This means for the plant in the salty water, the water is moving out of the plant to try to dilute the salt in the vase or whatever.

For the plant in the pure water, water is moving out of the vase into the plant to try to dilute the salt in the plant.

This is how plants uptake water, by osmosis, having a saltier concentration in the plant cells than the water they're sitting in. Hope this makes sense!!