How Does Soap Scum Form on Shower Doors?
Some tasks build your self image as you make a home for your family. Removing soap scum is one of those tasks that, if most of us had our way, wouldn’t be on the list. Whether you use a commercial cleaner, a homemade vinegar mixture or scrape it off with a single-edged razor, it’s one of the most stubborn substances to deal with in the pantheon of yucky stuff. And those use-them-every-time-you-shower cleaners only work if everybody uses them. You still have to clean the shower every weekend. Short of assigning the pursuit of soap scum to your kids as a chemistry problem (they’ll tire of the adventure in a few weeks), invest a little time in learning how this stuff gets stuck on your shower door and learn to use its chemistry to your advantage. Water is what we use to wash because it is neutral and plentiful. But water has a property called surface tension–the attraction between molecules that makes water bead into drops on surfaces. In order to use the water to clean, the surface tens
