SSC CGL 2022 PYQ — Question 50

The correct answer is option 1 i.e.  imbibants

• Colloidal systems such as gum, starch, proteins, cellulose, agar and gelatine  when
  placed in water, will absorb a large volume of water and swell up. These substances are
  called imbibants.
• The complex nature of the living substance in the cell, the protoplasm, is due to its physico-chemical properties. Protoplasm is predominantly composed of substances in the colloidal state and certainly it is to these colloidal systems that it owes much of its characteristic properties—variation in viscosity from values not greater than that of pure water to those of jellies, pronounced capacity for imbibition of water, though itself high in water content sometimes behaving as if immiscible with water, properties of irrever­sible coagulation at very high or low temperatures or at high concentration of salts, etc.