I want to ask about this sentence: When more solutes are in a solution, they attract water molecules more strongly, reducing the water potential.
Why water potential decreases even if there is more water?
The key idea here is that water potential isn’t simply about how much water is present — it’s more about how free those water molecules are to move.
So even if you have a solution with a lot of water, adding more solutes lowers the water potential because those solutes attract and bind water molecules. This binding effect makes the water molecules less free to move around.
Imagine you have a lot of people (representing water molecules) in an open room (pure water) — they can move around freely. Now, if you add a bunch of magnets (solutes) into the room that pulls people towards them, even though the room still has the same number of people, they’re stuck to those magnets and can’t move as freely. The ability of people to move around (water potential) decreases, even if the total number of people (amount of water) is the same or more.
Weird analogy I know but I hope it helps 