AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Osmotic pressure is also the reason you should not drink seawater if you’re stranded on a lifeboat in the ocean; seawater has a higher osmotic pressure than most of the fluids in your body. You can drink the water, but ingesting it will pull water out of your cells as osmosis works to dilute the seawater.

Detailed explanation-2: -If there’s too high a concentration of salt coming in, the cells force out extra water to maintain balance, basically wringing themselves out. They stop functioning, you stop functioning.

Detailed explanation-3: -Salt water is a hypertonic solution in comparison to the internal cellular liquid, since there are more solute particles outside in the salt water than inside in the cytoplasm. This means that water will move out of the cells by osmosis due to the concentration gradient, and the cells will become shrivelled.

Detailed explanation-4: -A hypertonic solution contains a high solute concentration with respect to cells. For example, a solution containing 10% salt is hypertonic. When a cell is placed in a hypertonic environment, there is a net movement of water to the outside of the cell (from the higher water environment inside the cell).