Easy osmosis practical

I would like to share an experiment your students can do to understand the process of osmosis. It's easy and cheap to set up. It also allows your pupils to further improve their lab skills.

To conduct the experiment you need a cucumber, some table salt, a table spoon, 200ml of tap water, 200ml of distilled water and a balance.

I was working with grade 8 MYP students in this class. I introduced them to magnetic stirrer as well to help with dissolving the salt.

We used 200 ml of both tap and distilled water and dissolved two tablespoons of salt. To keep the results consistent we decided to weigh the salt and use 34g.

We managed to get the first results after 1 hour in lesson, I took the second measurements for the pupils 2 hours into the experiment. Our last measurement was done the following day.

Lastly, I gave the students freedom to collate the results as a class an this is the table they put together:

 Click the table to enlarge it

We also decided to merge science and art and create posters to compare osmosis and diffusion.

Here are full instructions from the authors of this experiment:

I came across this experiment when doing "Basic Science: Understanding Experiments" course on Future Learn (click here).

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina