Soap is a necessity that is used by everyone in their everyday lives. Yet has anybody wondered how does soap work? How does it remove the dirt on our skin? Or why does soap turn into something else when it comes into contact with our skin? This mysterious phenomenon can be explained with chemistry.
In chemistry, soap is a alkai salt of a fatty acid. Soap is mainly used as surfactants for washing, bathing, and cleaning. Soaps for cleansing are obtained by treating vegetable or animal oils and fats with a strongly alkaline solution. Fats and oils are composed of triglycerides: three molecules of fatty acids attached to a single molecule of glycerol. The alkaline solution, often called lye, brings about a chemical reaction known as saponification. In saponification, the fats are first hydrolysed into free fatty acids, which then combined with the alkali to form crude soap. Glycerol, often called glycerine, is liberated and is either left in or washed out and recovered as a useful by-product.
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