How does soap work to clean things?
How Soap Works: Emulsification Soap is an emulsification agent. Oil and grease are not soluble in water (they don’t dissolve in water), which is why, for instance, oil and water will separate when combined. This is because oils are non-polar molecules, but water is a polar molecule, and non-polar things do not mix well with polar things. In order to remove oil from clothes or from your dishes with water, the oils must be made soluble by the process of emulsification. Soap works to emulsify oils in the following way: soap is a molecule is a long chain of atoms, and the two ends of the chain are very different from each other. On one end of the molecule is a group of atoms that form a section of the molecule that his highly polar. This end of the molecule can thus interact well with water (remember, like dissolves like). The other end of the molecule consists of a non-polar group, and this end of the molecule can interact well with the non-polar grease and oils. In this way, the soap bri
