You are in lab attempting to prepare a slide of cow blood for observation in a wet mount.You place a small drop of the blood on a slide,add a drop of strong saline (salt)solution,and then cover all of it with a coverslip.After returning to your desk,you observe the slide with your microscope and notice that all of the red blood cells (RBCs)do not look like the nice round donut shaped cells in your lab manual.Instead,the RBCs look very shriveled up.Your lab partner has also made a slide,but the RBCs on their slide do look like the ones in the lab manual;your lab partner used a more dilute solution of saline but the same vial of blood.What is the most plausible explanation for the appearance of the blood cells on your slide?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The shriveling of the RBCs indicates that water has moved out of the cells, causing them to shrink. This suggests that the saline solution was hypertonic to the RBCs, meaning that there was a higher concentration of solutes in the saline than in the RBCs, causing water to diffuse out of the cells in an attempt to equalize the concentration gradient. This could have been avoided by using a more dilute solution of saline like your lab partner.

You Are in Lab Attempting to Prepare a Slide of Cow