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Soap is a curious substance, designed to solve an intriguing problem. Most dirt that will not simply wipe off or be shaken out is in fact some form of fat or grease. In most households the most common cleaning agent is tap water. The problem is that grease and water fall into two different and largely incompatible chemical groups. Drop oil into water, and it will tend to float or form discrete droplets. Pour water into oil and you will see the same effect. Additionally, substances such as salt and sugar that dissolve in water will not dissolve in oil, whereas something like petrol will only float on water but is quite capable of dissolving oil.he Chemistry of Oils
This difference in behavior is due to the nature of the molecules involved. Water is largely polar, that is, water molecules tend to separate into fragments with opposite electrical charges, one positive and one negative. Chemicals such as table salt that happen to be made up of collections of charged fragments, or ions, find it easy to dissolve in water because the positive ions in the salt are attracted to the negative ions in the water, and vice versa. Similarly, the charged nature of water means that water is a good conductor of electricity.
Fats and oils, on the other hand, tend not to be polar. Their molecules have no particular electrical charge, and so are not attracted to polar substances such as salt. Instead, they prefer to bond with other non-polar substances. Fats and oils tend to be electrical insulators. p
This, then, returns us to the washing-up. You have a greasy dish in a bowl of water, but the grease is showing no inclination to dissolve in the water because the water is polar and the grease is not. Attack the grease with a cloth and most of what you achieve is to move it around on the plate, because it is trying to flatten itself against the surface of the plate in a effort to get away from the water molecules.
The soap molecule is a halfway house. It consists of a long strand with an ionic water-loving, grease-repelling group on one end, and a non-polar grease-loving, water-repelling group on the other. If you drop soap into clean water, all the molecules gather on the surface with their water-loving (hydrophilic) ionic ends stuck in the water and their fat-loving (lipophilic) ends waving in the air. Slide a dirty dish in, however, and the lipophilic end of each molecule sticks to the grease as it slips past. As the dish sinks, it takes the soap molecules with it, attached by their heads to the grease but still waving their hydrophilic tails in the water like microscopic tadpoles.
All you have to do now is bash at the dirt with a sponge or cloth, and it can be persuaded to leave the plate, for as it lifts off the surface it becomes insulated from the water as new soap molecules rush in and try to bury their heads in it. The end result is a small blob of grease completely surrounded by a layer of soap molecules, all with their lipophilic heads pointing inwards and their hydrophilic tails pointing outwards. As far as the grease is concerned, all it can see are lipophilic molecules, and as far as the water is concerned, all it can see is a rather large hydrophilic lump.
Eventually, of course, all the soap molecules are used up, and you have to tip out the washing-up water and start again. Pass the tea-towel.
Although olive plantations and olive oil production were known since earliest antiquity - tablets from Ebla dated 2400 BC mention olives and olive oil - the actual manufacture of soap from olive oil seems to have been a more recent development.
Soap is first mentioned as a medicinal lotion used in the treatment of certain conditions of the scalp and skin. This early soap was produced from animal and vegetable fats and oils. It is cited in early Sumerian and Assyrian tablets, as well as in Egyptian papyri. The Roman historian Pliny, writing in the 1st century AD, attributes the invention of soap to the Gauls.
Whatever its origins, by the Early Middle Ages soap produced from olive oil had become a thriving business all over the civilized world. Aleppo in Northern Syria was particularly famous for the quality of its soap produced in the many small workshops concentrated in the Bab Qinnisrin area.
By the 16th century, the workshops had been transformed into large factories and many specialized areas (Hay Al- Masabin), Souks (Shari Al- Sabbana) and Khans (Khan Al Saboun) came into being to cater for the booming soap industry. And they are still in existence today.
Commercial soap Companies use salt in a soap mixture to separate the glycerin from the soap. Then they siphon off the glycerin leaving only a detergent soap(not real soap). It is then sold at high cost for Shampoo's ,expensive soaps or used to make explosives.
This is the reason commercial soap makes your skin red ,dry and sometimes itch.
