If you sprinkle some common salt on grass growing on your lawn it gets killed at the spot. Why?

If common salt is sprinkled on the grass, then it dies because adding salt results in loss of water from the grass cells due to exosmosis. As the concentration of salt is more outside the cells, the water leaves the cell to maintain equilibrium on both sides of the cell. This results in excessive loss of water from the cell resulting in cell death.

It will shrink due to osmotic pressure. The osmotic pressure of a solution is directly proportional to it’s concentration. As the concentration of salt (solute) inside the grass is less, the solvent starts flowing from the inside the mango to the salt outside to maintain equilibrium. So water inside the grass decreases to do exosmosis and will lead to plasmolysis.

In simple terms, pure water and salted water if kept separated by a semi permeable membrane, then water flows from pure side having high water potential to concentrated side having low water potential. Hence grass will get killed due to excessive water loss.