Chemistry Of Soaps
Soap is a household item that is simply overlooked. It's many different uses and forms are oftentimes taken for granted. However, the complexity of its chemical makeup and the chemistry involved in making soap is extremely detailed. A delicate balance of ingredients is needed in order to make a soap that will perform well. Soap making is probably one of the oldest known chemical reactions and the history of soap is one that has revolutionized human hygiene. Although the basic foundation of soap has been laid, to this day there are improvements and changes that are being made and these improvements will probably continues as the years pass.
Michel-Eugene Cheureul, who lived from 1786 to 1889, was a French chemist. Cheureul is most well known for his early work on the chemistry of fat which changed soap making industries and laid the foundation for the further research into heart diseases caused by the buildup of certain fats. Soap was not, as many think, invented because of personal hygiene reasons. Soap was actually first produced to help the textile industry. It was found that the wool off of sheep was coated with a layer of grease that interferes with the application of dyes. Colorful yarns were valuable in the earliest days of production of textiles and thus people needed a way to wash the grease off of the wool effectively.1 As the years passed soap came to be used for washing things other then sheep and continues to be used in mass quantities today.
The development of soap has come a long way through the years. New developments in soap became more widely used in the 1950s with the introduction of automatic dishwasher powders and all-purpose cleaners. These new uses for soap made cleaning easier and more time effiecent than in the past. Even in the 1990s there are still new uses for soap that are only now being put on the market for consumers to use in their own homes. Some of these new advancements include automatic dishwasher gels and ultra...
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