Five popular misconceptions about osmosis

Osmosis is the flow of solvent across a semipermeable membrane from a region of lower to higher solute concentration. It is of central importance in plant and animal physiology and finds many uses in industry. A survey of published papers, web resources, and current textbooks reveals that numerous misconceptions about osmosis continue to be cited and taught. To clarify these issues, we re-derive the thermodynamics of osmosis using the canonical formalism of statistical mechanics and go on to discuss the main points that continue to lead to misunderstandings. (C) 2012 American Association of Physics Teachers. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4722325]