Edith made a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers. She seasoned the salad with herbs, salt, and pepper, then she placed it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
When Edith returned, she took the salad from the refrigerator. The lettuce had wilted, and the other vegetables were limp. She noticed that there was liquid in the bottle in the bowl. Where did the liquid come from? Why did the lettuce wilt (dried up)?
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The reason is OSMOSIS. Osmosis is the diffusion of a solvent (water) from a region of its higher concentration to a region of its lower concentration, in the direction that tends to equalize the solute (salt, sugar, etc.) concentrations on the two sides, through a semi permeable/ permeable membrane. So in this case, when she added seasoning to the salad there was potential difference of the solvent (there was more water in the vegetables than outside their cells) so water started diffusing out and the lettuce shrank due to the loss of water. This is also called exosmosis.
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