I have a biology test tomorrow and I still can’t understand the concept behind this and I think it’ll come out on the test. I need help, badly.
In: Biology
When you mix salty water and not-salty water, the salt gets distributed around so you get a bunch of medium-salty water.
But what if you put a barrier in the way that salt can’t get through?
Turns out you still get medium-salty water. Since the salt can’t get through the barrier from the salty side to the not-salty side, the water flows instead! The water goes through the barrier from the not-salty side to the salty side until both sides are equally salty. You end up with unequal amounts of water on either side of the barrier. That’s osmosis.
[This illustration might help](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/0307_Osmosis.jpg)
The skin of a cucumber is a real-life example of a salt-proof barrier like this. So if you put a cucumber in salty water, you get osmosis. The water from inside the cucumber will flow out through the skin, until the water inside the cucumber and outside the cucumber are equally salty. As the cucumber loses the water inside it, it shrivels up and shrinks, becoming a pickle.
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