Question

You decide to try your hand at canning pickles. You immerse freshly picked cucumbers in a solution that has a solute concentration twice that found in the cucumber cells. You allow your preparation to cure for several months in a sealed jar. When you later open the jar, you find that the fluid surrounding the pickles is more dilute than when you started.This change in concentration is due to_____.

Answer 1

Exosmosis of water from cucumber cells into the fluid.

Step-by-step explanation:

The solute concentration of the fluid in which cucumbers were immersed was higher than that of the cucumber cells. This means that the fluid was hypertonic with respect to the cucumber cells. This allowed movement of water from the hypotonic cucumber cells towards the hypertonic surrounding fluid. The process is called exosmosis with respect to cucumber cells. The loss of water from the cucumber cells by the process of osmosis diluted the surrounding fluid.