In chemical biology, tonicity is a measure of the effective osmotic pressure gradient; the water potential of two solutions separated by a partially-permeable cell membrane. Tonicity depends on the relative concentration of selective membrane-impermeable solutes across a cell membrane which determine the direction and extent of osmotic flux. It is commonly used when describing the swelling-versus-shrinking response of cells immersed in an external solution. Unlike osmotic pressure, tonicity is influenced only by solutes that cannot cross the membrane, as only these exert an effective osmotic pressure. Solutes able to freely cross the membrane do not affect tonicity because they will always equilibrate with equal concentrations on both sides of the membrane without net solvent movement. It is also a factor affecting imbibition. There are three classifications of tonicity that one solution can have relative to another: hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic.A hypotonic solution example is distilled water. Hypertonic solution
A hypertonic  is when the concentration inside the cell is high and the environment is dilute. In biology, the tonicity of a solution usually refers to its solute concentration relative to that of another solution on the opposite side of a cell membrane; a solution inside of a cell is called hypertonic if it has a greater concentration of solutes than the cytosol inside the cell and its environment is dilute. So when the cell is hypertonic(concentrated) the cell needs more water, so water is forced to enter inside the cell and the cell will swell up and eventually burst.
Water molecules freely diffuse through the plasma membrane in both directions, and as the rate of water diffusion is the same in each direction, the cell will neither gain nor lose water. == References ==