Ali Capener

CHEM 1010
Okleberry
12/9/16
The Chemistry of Soap
For my ePortfolio project, I chose to write something about soap. Since the very first week of
class, which was sixteen weeks ago, I learned a whole lot from this class. I figured talking about
the chemistry of soap would kind of kill two birds with one stone you could say. It involves ionic
bonds, hydrocarbons, solutes and solvents, etc. It essentially wraps up everything weve learned
all into one.
The basic structure of soap is essentially the same, consisting of a long hydrophobic
hydrocarbon tail and a hydrophilic anionic head. (www.chemistryexplained.com) The
length of the hydrocarbon chain varies but is generally always pretty long. In making soap,
triglycerides in fat or oils are heated in the presence of a strong alkali base such as sodium
hydroxide, producing three molecules of soap for every molecule of glycerol. This process is
called saponification. (www.chemistryexplained.com) Its a little weird to think that in order to
clean our hands, were using fats and oils to do so.
I found the subject of soap to be relevant not only because it has a lot do with chemistry,
but it also has to do with things we learned very recently as well. In studying how soap works, it
is useful to consider a general rule of nature: like dissolves like. That immediately reminded

me of chapter fifteen and what we learned about solutes and solvents. Take for example how
nonpolar things will dissolve nonpolar things. Hence the rule of like dissolves like.
In essence, soap molecules partially dissolve the greasy stain to form the emulsion that
is kept suspended in water until it can be rinsed away. So basically, soap is pretty cool.
However, like most everything, soap also has its drawbacks. Apparently soaps dont work well in
hard water containing calcium and magnesium ions because the calcium and magnesium salts
of soap are insoluble. The ions eventually precipitate out therefore not really working very well.
In conclusion, soap is basically a really long hydrocarbon chain with a hydrophobic tail
and a hydrophilic head. Its made of triglycerides of fats and oils and is used to clean things until
the magnesium and calcium ions precipitate out and its no longer useful.