| MadSci Network: Anatomy |
Hi Gretchen,
This is not my area of specialty, but I will do my best to answer this question for you. If you put blood in a centrifuge, you would be able to separate out the components and collect the blood plasma. You would see that blood plasma is a transparent straw-coloured solution. Since the plasma is transparent, it is neither a colloidal solution nor a suspension.
Colloids make solutions cloudy and cannot be separated either by settling or filtration. An example of a colloidal solution is milk. Suspensions have particles visible to the naked eye. They can be separated by either settling or filtration.
Blood plasma is therefore an aqueous solution.
Richard Kingsley
You can refer to any general chemistry text for grade 11/12 to find out more about the definitions of an emulsion, colloid, solution,etc.. You can refer to any good biology text which will tell you what blood plasma comprises.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Anatomy.