Help with osmosis?

Question

If a solute is only on one side of a selectivly permeable membrane but it cannot move through the membrane, will there still be a net movement of water towards the side of he membrane containing the solute. Assume the other side contains pure water.

Answer 1

Yes there will be a net movement of water to the side with the solute, since osmosis is by definition the passive movement of water from a region of low solute concentration to a region of high solute concentration. There are no known mechanisms involving water moving against the concentration gradient. The other thing that is expected to happen is that the solution will rise due to osmosis. In other words osmosis is a special case of diffusion where water moves from a region of high water concentration to a region of low water concentration.