osmosis

I have been asked to investigate how a manufacturer of frozen chips could increase their profit margin. I have been told that frozen chips are sold by weight, therefore I have to find a way to increase a frozen chips weight without increasing the manufacturing cost by any significant amount. One way to do this would be to increase the concentration of water within the potato chips. I have investigated what scientific information might be useful and found that water can diffuse across a potatoes membrane from a dilute solution to a more concentrated solution by a process called osmosis. According to Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 98, osmosis is ôThe flow of water by diffusion through a differently permeable membrane from areas of high water concentration to areas of low water concentration. The diagram below shows this: To get heavier potato chips, the water has to enter the potato chips through osmosis. All plant cell membranes are differentially permeable, which means that they will ...