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?
a. The saline you used was hypotonic to the RBCs; this resulted in water osmosing through the RBC plasma membrane mostly into the cells.
b. The saline you used was isotonic to the RBCs; this resulted in water osmosing through the RBC plasma membrane into and out of the cells at an equal rate.
c. The saline you used was hypertonic to the RBCs; this resulted in water osmosing through the RBC plasma membrane mostly out of the cell.
d. The RBCs were hypertonic to the saline; this resulted in water osmosing through the RBC plasma membrane mostly into the cells.
Answer: c. The saline you used was hypertonic to the RBCs; this resulted in water osmosing through the RBC plasma membrane mostly out of the cell.
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