Question

You have a small potted plant outside your front door. Before coming inside your friend dumps the rest of a Red Bull (half full) into your plant. The plant maintains a solute concentration of 0.85%. The Red Bull has a sugar concentration of 10%. A few hours later your plant is drooping. Why

Answer 1

Your plant is dropping because is surrounded by a hypertonic solution of Red Bull. (Hypertonic solutions are solutions that surround a living cell, and have higher—in this case 10%—concentration of solute than the concentration of solute in the living cell, which is only 0.85%.) In order for there to be a balance of concentration of solute within and outside the cell, water would have to leave the cell to go outside and reduce the concentration of solute outside the cell. This causes the plant to droop as a result of gradual removal of water from the cell.