In life it is essential to understand which substances can permeate the cell membrane. This is important because substances that are able to permeate the cell membrane may be necessary for the cell to function. Likewise, it is important to have a semipermeable membrane in the cell because it can help protect against harmful objects that want to enter the cell. Additionally, it is critical to understand how water moves through the cell through osmosis because if the solute concentration is not regulated, net osmosis can occur outside or inside the cell, causing problems such as plasmolysis and cytolysis. . The plasma membrane of a cell can be modeled in various ways, but dialysis tubing is particularly useful for modeling which substances will diffuse or be transported out of a cell membrane. The experiment seeks to identify which substances would be permeable to the cell membrane through the use of dialysis tubing, starch, glucose, salt and various solute indicators. However, before analyzing which of the solutes (starch, glucose, and salt) is likely to pass through the membrane, it is critical to understand how the dialysis tubing compares to the cell membrane. Dialysis tubing is made from regenerated cellulose or cellophane and is used in clinical circumstances to ensure that molecules have a filtered flow and that larger solute molecules do not enter the dialysis tubing (Alberts, 2002). Like a cell membrane, dialysis tubing has a semipermeable membrane, which allows small molecules to permeate through the membrane. Therefore, the dialysis tubing mimics the diffusion and osmosis processes of the cell membrane (Alberts, 2002). Although the dialysis tubing has a semipermeable membrane, which mimics a cell, its structure is different. The central part of the paper is a monomer component of starch. Being a monomer, unlike a polymer, it is much smaller and would therefore be able to cross the plasma membrane. However, glucose is a larger solute than the component ions of salt, meaning that simple diffusion would not be sufficient. Instead, facilitated diffusion would be required to transport the glucose. However, there is no facilitated transport in the dialysis tubing as there is in the plasma membrane. Therefore, glucose can pass through the dialysis tube, but this would not be due to transport, but to the artificial widening of the passages in the dialysis tube. The water would move freely in and out of the cell, however, since there is a higher concentration of solute inside the cell, the water would diffuse through osmosis into the cell model, increasing the final mass of the tube of dialysis and causing cytolysis..