I just learned extensively about osmosis in my college biology class. Then I saw “reverse osmosis” where I get my water.
So what is “reverse osmosis” if water can move both ways depending on whether the solute or solvent is hypotonic?
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You know how osmosis allows some material to pass through the membrane to equalize concentration? It turns out that if you apply pressure to one side, you can cause the solutions on either side to become unequal concentrations.
It’s essentially a *super* fine filter you push water through that impurities like salt cannot penetrate.
I”m going to step back to explain osmosis to then explain reverse osmosis.
Osmosis is what happens when you have a barrier that water can go through, but other things can’t. If there wasn’t the barrier, water and the things dissolved in water would move until it was the same everywhere. With the barrier, the things dissolved can’t move, but water still can, and the same thing happens: eventually, you have the same ratio of water to dissolved stuff on both sides.
Reverse osmosis uses that kind of barrier to separate water out. If you have water with stuff dissolved in it on one side of a barrier, and *nothing* on the other side, water still moves through. It’s trying to make the same amount of water to other stuff on both sides – but if you keep moving the water on the other side away, it never gets to equal.
You can make that go faster by pushing the water at the barrier.
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