How Does Soap, Soap?

Morning hand washers!

Humans have been making and using soap for literally thousands of years.

It's simple, trivially easy to make, and unlike most ancient medical practices… works.

Making it one of the easiest ways to prevent disease. 

Which is great if you tend to live like this:

But how does soap actually work?

First, what even is soap?

Put very simply, soap is just a bunch of fatty acids and chemicals.

They’re all basically the same thing.

Anyway, all soaps are mostly made up of these little things called soap molecules:

Which kinda looks like little sperm with a head and a tail.

You can even see it in the chemical structure lol:

The thing is, the head bit LOVES water, which is known as hydrophilic.

But the tail bit HATES water, known as hydrophobic.

(This will be important later)

Ok, now let me show you how it works…

So let's say that you have really mucky hands (for whatever reason). 

Your grubby mitts are absolutely covered in dirt, grime, and oils.

Yuck!

So you go to wash your hands.

Alright, let's zoom in to see what's going on.

Running just water over your hands can only remove particles that can dissolve in water, like food particles, salt, sugars, dead skin cells, and dirt.

But to get rid of oily substances and germs, you need something a little more powerful.

This is where the soap molecule guys come in.

Now, they don't actually kill the germs; they actually just give them a big old hug.

Lemme explain…

Remember how the tails of the soap molecules HATE water? 

Well, they REALLY hate water. 

So when you rub your hands together with soapy water, the tails of the molecules start going crazy.

And they start to attach themselves to literally anything they can find to escape the water. 

Surrounding and latching onto any oils and germs on your hands.

This creates these little balls of soap molecules called Micelles.

And now, with just a little rubbing and a bit of water, the ball of soap molecules gets picked up and simply flows away…

Dragging germs and oil particles along with it.

Thanks, little soap molecules!

Stay Cute,
Reece, Henry & Dylan 🌈

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