Is boiling pasta an example of hypotonic solution?

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Curiosity Science Biology and Medicine Is boiling pasta an example of hypotonic solution?

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  • Does the size of pasta increase because it’s increasing in cell size. So the water diffuses into the pasta . From water to pasta? Or is it not and if so what’s another example of a real world hypotonic solution. Even what’s an example of real world hypertonic solution?

    – DiLan via the Ask a Science Question page.

  • You are right. When you put the pasta in water, the water molecules diffuse into pasta and expands it. The boiling medium is the hypotonic solution here; as the concentration of solutes is less in it compared to the cells of the pasta. Tonicity is a relative measure between two solutions, so any real world example would require two solutions with an osmotic gradient between them. In the pasta example, water is the hypotonic solution. And for the cells found in the fish gills, the salty seawater is a hypertonic solution.

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