Question

Anu is a five year old girl who joined the swimming classes. After the first class she was worried when she saw her wrinkled fingers. She asked her elder sister about the wrinkling & shrinking of her fingers. Her sister explained Anu why it was so.
Why did the fingers wrinkle after swimming? What caused the shrinking/ wrinkling of fingers?

Answer 1

Osmosis is a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one. So when Anu's fingers were in contact with the water for a long time her finger lost the water from low concentration in the body to the high concentration in the pool due to this the shrinkage occurs. This is the scientific phenomenon which Anu came across.