Ok, could somebody please explain osmosis to me and diffusion?
Diffusion just means atoms or molecules bouncing around randomly so that they eventually spread out evenly. For example, if you fart in one corner of a room, the random movement of the molecules will eventually make them spread out evenly so you can smell it just the same everywhere. Osmosis is a bit different – it’s all about water. Imagine you have a space divided in two by a membrane that only water will go through. If you have pure water on both sides, there will be the same amount of diffusion in both directions (the water was spread out evenly to start with, so there’s no overall change). Now imagine you add some salt to both sides – more on the right. The salt effectively “soaks up” some of the water on each side, because it’s made up of charged ions that the water will stick to (because water is a polar – slightly charged – molecule). This means that you have less free water on the right, because more has been “soaked up”. Diffusion makes the remaining, “free”, water spread out
