An odd question. After experimenting in the kitchen, both plant ( broccoli) and Animal( cow) cells tasted somewhat better with salt, although less so with the plant.
Plant Cell has a cell wall, vacuole and chloroplasts, all of which animal cells dont (only have membrane, nucleus, mitochondria and cytoplasm).
Cant remember off the top of my head, but I think if you add salt to a plant cell, the cell will try and take up water by osmosis to dilute it. The animal cell will do the same, but the animal cell will change in size, whereas the plant wont because of the cell wall.
Note, I havent done Biology in nearly 2 years, so I may be wrong
Question for you Leegreg: why do you keep asking us? Why not check BBC Revision?
The big differences between an animal and a plant cell is that an animal cell is roundish, while a plant cell is rectangular-ish due to a stiff cellulose cell wall and a large central vacuole filled with fluid.
When you add salt to an area around a cell, the fluid within the cell, which is largely water-based, will leave the cell membrane in an effort to rebalance the concentration gradient between the inside and outside. If you add salt to the interior of a cell, water will flow into a cell, causing it to swell, and, in the case of animal cells, lyse (or explode).
If you add salt to a solution around a plant cell, then the cell membrane will separate from the cell wall as the fluid matrix within leaves the cell.
Adding salt within a plant cell will again cause fluid to enter the cell to reestablish equilibrium, but as a side effect, causes turgidity, which is a swelling of the cell's wall. The plant cell won't lyse under normal circumstances because the cell wall is too rigid to prevent that.
dang it! I was hoping to get the first post. Ah well, maybe next time.
Oh god, not GCSE biology. I am NOT going to help you to do this, because the answers will be blindingly obvious if you do even the tiniest lick of research. Besides which, the entire GCSE science curriculum tends towards the pseudoscientific simplified bunk side of things. I got an A* in it based almost entirely on my reading outside class.
Would you rather explain quantum mechanics to me?
Because anything that someone can help someone with in terms of homework over the internet through a forum will either be painfully obvious or too complicated for anyone but an expert.
Yeah, and moreover I don't believe in the entire system that they've got going. Once you've learnt about diffusion and about cell membranes and walls, the answers to those questions become child's play.
And I MEAN childs play. Take the case of cellular biology in point. The cell membrane is in fact a synthesis of lipids with certain specialised proteins embedded in it. For some reason, instead of telling kids about proton pumps, etc, they choose to label the process whereby nutrients enter the cell as 'active transport' and leave the whole thing alone until you get to A-level. I was perfectly comfortable with those concepts at the age of 12, let alone 16- and so would almost any averagely bright 12 year old be. Somewhere along the line, somebody- probably a MORON- decided that it was too complicated for 16 year-olds. Meanwhile, somebody in a public(for the americans, this means private.) school is getting a real education instead. A comprehensive education shouldn't be an inferior substitute to a private one- it should be a real alternative.