Question

Ms. Wilson traveled to Italy this summer and went swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Her skin felt very dry after a long day of swimming. Using your knowledge of osmosis, explain why her skin feels dry in complete sentences.

Answer 1

Step-by-step explanation:

Here, we want to explain why the skin feels dry.

Before we proceed with this, we need to understand what is meant by osmosis.

Osmosis simply means a condition where we have the movement of solvent molecules from a region of lower concentration to a region of higher concentration.

In this case, her body is the region of higher solvent concentration while the fluid from the sea water is the region of lower solvent concentration.

So with the skin acting as a semi permeable membrane, there would be the movement of the solvent molecules from the sea water into the body via the skin.

So when this happens, the salt-water from the sea becomes dehydrated as it loses its water content to the more solute concentrated body.

With this happening, what we have is a dry skin from the salt water touching the body