human anatomy

[katrinaloo]

HELP!im Studying  a b-tec national diplomia in health and social care and can't find the answer for a questionin my assigment that is in on thursday! It is to write a paragraph explaining an example of OSMOTIC POTENTIAL in the human body! any help will be so thanked !tar

[ursula62]

Hi Katrina
If you know what osmosis means then you should be able to think about where that feature might be useful in the human body.

Osmosis is the movement of particles from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration via a semi-permeable membrane.

Probably the most obvious example of this in the human body would be in the kidney/bladder region, although there are many areas in the body where osmosis is required for function. If I tell you any more I'd be doing your homework for you!

Good luck

[Calvesy]

When you spend too long in the bath, [edited by AB ED], washing up, you will notice that your skin on your fingers crupmles like a prune from absorbing water. This is because cytoplasm in your skin cells is salty. You can spend ages in sea water without this happening.

[janesmythe22]

Osmotic potential is the potential of water to move into a region by the process of osmosis, the potential of the water to travel from a hypotonic (low concentration) solution to a hypertonic (high concentration) solution. It sounds less complicated if you think of water moving from one place where water is more �concentrated� (�higher potential�) to the place where water is less �concentrated� (�lower potential�). Not truly �scientific� (because water is regarded as �solvent�), but easier to remember. What counts most here is �semipermeable membrane�, that is, a membrane that is freely traversed by solvent, such as water, but which permits the passage of only certain solutes. The kidney/bladder "case" is a wee-bit more complicated than this.

[janesmythe22]

Back again. Ursula62 was right about your home work. So what follows is not about human body example (quite interesting, though).

In the example of the fresh water fish placed in the ocean, the water in the fish has  a lower salt concentration than the surrounding ocean.  The water in the fish moves through the semi permeable membrane (the cells of the living fish) from the area of low salt concentration (the fish) to the area of high salt concentration (the ocean).  As a result, the fish dies of dehydration while surrounded by water.