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this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Asklemmy
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No one really knows how osmosis works.
I had to derive osmotic pressure for my statistical mechanics exam in my bachelor's. So in what sense don't we know?
We don't know what molecular mechanism creates the pressure.
Isn't it just water carrying stuff across a concentration gradient?
Gravity is just stuff falling, but there’s complexity there, as well.
No? Water can't carry anything across the membrane.
Oh. Then how does the stuff get across the membrane? Does the membrane allow stuff to move over a concentration gradient without the water?
Water can move freely across the membrane, but the stuff that's dissolved in the water cannot move across the membrane.