Question

If a red blood cell is placed in distilled water, which would have a higher concentration of water molecules, the distilled water or the red blood cell? where would water potential be less? is distilled water a hypotonic or hypertonic solution?

Answer 1

1. The distilled water has a higher concentration of water molecules.

Distilled water only contained water molecules, nothing else is dissolved in it. It has the highest water concentration no matter what substances.

2. The red blood cells has less water potential.

Water potential is the tendency of the water molecules to move from one region to another. Due to the rule of osmosis, water molecule is more likely to move from the distill water to the cell, from a region of higher water concentration to a region of lower water concentration.

Therefore, red blood cell has less water potential.

3. Distilled water is a hypotonic solution.

When the solution causes the water to flow away to other regions, they're said to be hypotonic. There water potential is higher than the other side. Therefore, the answer is distilled water.

Answer 2

If a red blood cell is placed in distilled water, distilled water would have a high concentration of water molecules than red blood cells, the red blood cell would have less water potential, and distilled water is a hypotonic solution.

If a red blood cell is placed in distilled water then,

• Distilled water is pure water without any solute in it so the water concentration would be 100% or high, whereas the red blood cell has 90% water concentration and 10% solute,

Thus, distilled water would have a high concentration

• Water potential is the tendency of the water molecules to move from one area to other. Osmosis shows that in this case, water moves from distilled water to red blood cell which means water potential is more on distilled water.

thus, the red blood cell would have less water potential

• The distilled water contains less concentration of the solute than the red blood cell, due to its 100% concentration of water, it is a hypotonic solution.

thus, distilled water is a hypotonic solution.

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