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Concentrate on Osmosis

  • David H. Silver(author)
Chapter of: Beyond Popular Science
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Title Concentrate on Osmosis
ContributorDavid H. Silver(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0526.31
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0526/chapters/10.11647/obp.0526.31
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightDavid H. Silver
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2026-04-08
Long abstract

Standard osmosis explanations based solely on water concentration gradients fail to account for measured flow rates that far exceed diffusion limits. The ratio of osmotic permeability to diffusive permeability (Pf/Pd) commonly exceeds 100 in biological systems with aquaporins, while purely diffusive transport would yield a ratio near 1. Mechanical explanations, notably Debye’s model, attribute osmosis to pressure gradients arising from solute-membrane interactions rather than simple diffusion. When solutes are excluded by a semipermeable membrane, their momentum cannot transfer across the boundary, creating a localized pressure drop that drives water movement.

Print length10 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
THEMA
  • PH
  • PHQ
  • PHR
  • PDZ
BISAC
  • SCI055000
  • SCI015000
  • SCI057000
  • SCI061000
  • SCI075000
  • SCI034000
Keywords
  • Scientific storytelling
  • Conceptual physics
  • Modern physics explained
  • Relativity and quantum mechanics
  • Mathematics in science
  • Deep science for general readers
Locations
Landing PageFull text URLPlatform
PDFhttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0526/chapters/10.11647/obp.0526.31Landing pagehttps://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0526.31.pdfFull text URL
Contributors

David H. Silver

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3071-304X

David H. Silver is an industrial researcher whose career bridges computer vision, computational biology, and science communication. He studied mathematics, computer science, and biology at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology as a Rothschild Scholar, and was awarded a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship for his doctoral work in computational biology at Cambridge, UK. Silver’s peer-reviewed publications span multiple domains: computational biology in Nature and PNAS; computer vision systems in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence; medical AI in Human Reproduction and MIDL; and entertainment analysis in PLoS One. He holds over a dozen patents in depth sensing, medical imaging, and generative AI. His industry positions include Algorithm Engineer at Intel Corporation, ML Researcher at Apple, and CTO/co-founder roles at several technology startups. Silver maintains academic collaborations with researchers worldwide and serves as a peer reviewer for Image and Vision Computing and PNAS.

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UK registered social enterprise and Community Interest Company (CIC).

Company registration 14549556

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