Soap is something that (ideally) we use in our everyday lives. You use soap to wash your hands after using the bathroom and before prepping meals. We lather ourselves in soap when we shower and soak ourselves in it when we bathe. Despite soap being ubiquitous in our environment, how often have you stopped to think about how it really works?
Is Soap Scared of Water?
As professional cleaners, we take our soap very seriously. We rely on having the proper cleaning tools and products to be able to do our job well. However, we also need to ensure we have a solid understanding of how those products work. At the molecular level, soap is not so different from oils or fats, which are also known as lipids. Lipids are long chains of carbon that are hydrophobic, which means when they are placed in water they prefer to group together rather than mix with the water molecules. This is why oil and water don’t mix! Soap is special in that it has a similar long chain of carbon, but features a hydrophilic head as opposed to being completely hydrophobic. Although these two words sound similar, they mean completely opposite things. While hydrophobic substances like oil don’t play well with water, hydrophilic substances will easily mix and associate.
What Does This Mean?
When you scrub your hands with soap, you’ll notice the formation of bubbles. These bubbles are the result of the long hydrophobic tails of soap molecules grouping together while the hydrophilic heads form an exterior molecular shell. This tiny spherical structure is known as a micelle, and is very useful for getting rid of dirt and grime. The physical bubbles you see are a result of air getting trapped between a thin sandwich of soap molecules and water.
Regency Cleaning uses only the highest quality of cleaning products to get the job done right. While we’ve talked a little bit about how soap works, there are many different variations to soaps and cleaning products that are each uniquely suited to a particular task. Luckily for you, that’s for us to worry about, and not you! All you have to do is leave the dirty work to us and we’ll ensure that your property gets the thorough cleaning it deserves. Ready to get started? Call us at 403-520-7788 today!
