Final answer:
When animal cells are placed in a dilute solution, they experience osmosis where water enters the cell due to the hypotonic environment outside, potentially leading to cell swelling and bursting, known as hemolysis.
Step-by-step explanation:
When animal cells are placed in a dilute solution, they are exposed to a hypotonic environment, which means that the concentration of solutes outside the cell is lower than inside the cell's cytoplasm. As a result, water will move into the cell via osmosis. The net movement of water into the animal cells causes them to swell and can potentially lead to the cells bursting, a process known as hemolysis.
This influx of water is due to osmosis, which is the diffusion of water molecules across a selectively permeable membrane from an area of higher water concentration to one of lower water concentration. In a biological context, animal cells must maintain an isotonic state for optimal function, and deviations from this can result in cellular damage or death.
The effects of osmosis are critical to the survival of cells and organisms. For example, in medical applications, solutions injected into the body must be isotonic to prevent hemolysis or crenation, which is cell shrinking due to water loss in a hypertonic solution. Understanding osmosis is essential in fields such as medicine, where it is crucial to maintain the osmolar balance within the body to prevent cell damage.