Blood is an example of a colloidal mixture.
What would happen if blood behaved like a true suspension inside the body?
If blood behaved like a true suspension, its larger particles would settle over time instead of remaining uniformly dispersed. This settling would disrupt blood's vital role of connecting different parts of the body by transporting nutrients, gases and hormones.
In a blood sample, identify the dispersed phase and the dispersion medium.
In a blood sample, the dispersed phase consists of the cellular components, specifically the platelets, white and red blood cells. The dispersion medium is the plasma, the liquid component in which these cells are uniformly dispersed.
Explanation
The context states that unlike a suspension, the particles in a colloid do not settle over time and are uniformly dispersed. If blood were a true suspension, its particles would settle, hindering its function of transporting nutrients, gases, and hormones. For the components, the text identifies plasma, platelets, white and red blood cells as the separable parts of blood, allowing us to identify the cells/platelets as the dispersed phase and plasma as the dispersion medium.