Water Stuff

Homework Handout (from class):  About Osmosis, the way water travels across a semi-permeable membrane from an area of high concentration to an area of lower concentration.   Try to remember enough from class to figure it out, but we will be going over it on Thursday in class, so you don't need to fill in what you don't know.

Water is so important to life!

Here's another experiment to do at home (easy set-up, but observe throughout the day.) Draw or take pictures  or describe with words, and be sure to record the time in your lab notebooks.

The directions:
Materials:

• two clear plastic cups
  
• water
  
• food coloring
  
• one sheet of paper towel
  
• a large, thick book
  
• an undisturbed area of the classroom

Procedure:  Start this experiment in the morning. Place two clear cups approximately 1-2 inches apart. Fill one cup about 3/4 full and drop in some food coloring. Roll a sheet of paper towel and flatten it to a long 1-inch flat rectangle. Place the paper towel across the cups, touching the water in the first cup, and placed into the second cup.  Make a prediction about what may happen--the hypothesis.

1. Set up a chart after your hypothesis. It should include two columns: Time and Observations.
2.  In one hour you should observe what will happen.
3.   Next,  you will be placing a large, thick book under one of the cups (Place it under cup 2, the cup that did not initially have water in it, so that you see that water moves in ____________).  Predict what will happen.
4. Place the book and watch what happens! After a period of time, the water levels will be at the ____ height within each cup.
5. Think about why the water travels the way it does. Cohesion is the ability for water to attach to itself and travel. Adhesion is the ability for water to attach to other materials. 

Your lab "report" should be this:
Title
Briefly, what I am going to do (describe the experiment)
What I think will happen (the hypothesis)
What is happening (drawings and descriptions, with the time given ...after one hour...after two hours...etc.
Why I think it happened that way.