What happens to any cells when they are exposed to distilled water?

Answer 1

Most likely, the water will enter the tissue due to osmosis, stretching and finally splitting the cell membranes and destroying the cells.

However, in a living organism, you'd need an almighty quantity of water for that, simply because the body has ways of distributing the water.

Answer 2

If by injecting you mean causing the cells to be soaked in distilled water, the cells would swell up, and possibly burst. This is because the distilled H2O creates a hypotonic environment where water would diffuse into the cell via osmosis, since the interior of the cell has a higher concentration of "non-water stuff".

If you mean directly injecting a cell, it would probably depend on how much you inject, since if its enough to stretch the cell beyond a certain point it will explode. That is if the physical injection hasn't destroyed the cell to begin with.

Answer 3

It is because the ditilled water is hyperconcentrated w.r.t. the sap contained inside the cell. As a result of this, the water enters from its area of higher amount (solution) to the area of lower amount (in side the cell) by the process called osmosis. Thus, the entery of water inside the cell makes is swollen and ulimately cause the bursting of the cell.

Answer 4

There will most likely be a net movement of water into the cell. This is because the concentration of solutes outside the cell is greater than inside the cell, so the water will move inside in order to establish equilibrium.

If it is an animal cell, it will eventually burst. If it is a plant cell, the cell wall will prevent it from bursting.

Answer 5

If you inject water, it changes the solute concentration surrounding the red blood cell. Instead of being isotonic (when there is no net movement of liquid into or out of the cell), the balance shifts, causing water to diffuse by osmosis into the red blood cell. This causes the cell to swell up. It may burst (cell lysis) if too much water diffuses in.

Answer 6

nothing