Key Terms
- diffusion
- passive transport process of low-molecular weight material according to its concentration gradient
- hypertonic
- situation in which extracellular fluid has a higher osmolarity than the fluid inside the cell, resulting in water moving out of the cell
- hypotonic
- situation in which extracellular fluid has a lower osmolarity than the fluid inside the cell, resulting in water moving into the cell
- isotonic
- situation in which the extracellular fluid has the same osmolarity as the fluid inside the cell, resulting in no net water movement into or out of the cell
- osmosis
- passive transport process of low-molecular weight material according to its concentration gradient
- surface area-to-volume ratio
- describes the relationship between the area outside the cell to the volume inside the cell
