Biology/Osmosis and diffusion.
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Question
Help with drawing a diagram that "involves osmosis and diffusion in a specific organism". I was thinking that I could do something like water intoxication in humans but I don't know how to draw that in a diagram or explain how osmosis and diffusion are used.
Thanks for using AllExperts. I would suggest diagramming water transport in the kidney tubule; diffusion (mostly of dissolved ions and proteins) and osmosis are used extensively to regulate absorption. You can find information and diagrams of these processes at these links; really, I don't think that there are much better examples of osmosis and diffusion in the human.
A basic overview of kidney function:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/~cre/web_mod/viper/kidney_function.htm
To orient you to the diagram, this is how the kidney tubule (nephron) works. Plasma from the blood is filtered freely into the nephron, containing glucose, dissolved ions, and other factors. Fluid then travels along the nephron while fluid and dissolved solutes are reabsorbed at different points along the way. This reabsorbed material enters capillaries that closely follow the tubule along its entire course. Simultaneously, unwanted material is actively excreted into the nephron. Anything left over at the end of the tubule is lost as urine.
A more complex description of the kidney:
http://www.biologyinmotion.com/nephron/index.html
http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~petesmif/petesmif/why%20do%20we%20need%20kidneys/index.h...
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John Locke
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