20% concentration of sucrose. (It was decided that saturated sucrose solution could be taken as 100%, for the purposes of this experiment.) This boiling tube was then labelled, and placed in the rack, and the above steps repeated twice. The above steps were repeated until there were 15 boiling tubes; 3 with 0% sucrose concentration, 3 with 20%, 3 with 40%, 3 with 60% and 3 with 80%. There were three of each solution to enable three readings from each level of sucrose concentrationto be made, and therefore an average reading could be calculated. A potato from the Desiree family was taken, a tile was put on the bench and a core remover was used to take fifteen cores from the potato. All cores were taken from the same potato to help ensure a fair test. Safety precautions were put into practise. We used a tile on the bench so that the bench would not be damaged, and were careful not to push the corer into our hands. Boiling tubes were held safely in racks.The cores were then sliced up on a new tile using a scalpel, until they were all approximately the same length and weighed using a top-pan balance to check that they all weighed in the region of 0.65g. The cores were then put into the solutions in the boiling tubes, and a stopwatch was started. The cores were started with two minute intervals between each start time to allow suffiicient time when they were finishing to be weighed and disposed of. If this time had not been allowed, some cores would have had more time in the solutions than others causing an unfair test and a false conclusion.After one hour, the potato cores were removed, dried on a paper towel to remove any excess surface water and re-weighed on the top-pan balance. The results were noted in a table and the difference in mass was calculated by dividing the final weight by the original weight, multiplying this by one hundred, and then calculating the difference between the number and one hundred. e.g.first weight= 0.65gse...
