This isn’t something I know, but I’m pretty sure that, at least in the olden days, it was made from animal fat or lard. I doubt that it would be anymore though!
Haha you can do this just as well yourself, but I just googled it and one recipe I found does indeed require lard!
What’s actually happening when you make soap is an acid-base reaction. You’ll probably hear about acid-base in chemistry. Lye is used as the base and oil or fat is the acid. When you mix them together a reaction occurs which produces a fatty acid salt (not like the one you eat!) which we know as soap.
I think you should give it a go and you can call yourself a saponificator!
The purpose of soap is to get the grease on your face dissolved in water. Grease and water don’t mix – try adding oil to water. So soap molecules have a greasy end and at the other end is something that has an electrical charge, like an ion, which dissolves in water. Ions dissolve well – table salt is sodium chloride – two ions. The greasy end of the soap molecule is attracted to the grease. The charged end likes water. So the greasy molecule on your face is surrounded by the greasy end of the soap molecule, leaving all the charged ends on the outside. The result – the greasy molecule is carried off into the water, and down the sink. Result – nice clean face.
So if you want to make soap, you have to make these molecules. Yes, this used to be done by taking grease and making one end charged. You can do that with strong bases like lye. So it’s true you can make soap from fat. You can also make it from other things. There are lots of long molecules we can get from oil, and it’s pretty easy to change one end of them into a charged end. So you can also make soap from crude oil, kind of.
Of course, you also have to add nice smelly things to make the soap smell nice, and some colour (usually). On the ingredients of your soap it’ll say things like fragrance and aloe vera or something, and then there will be a bunch of things like “sodium oleate” or “sodium laureate” – words like that. Those are the long molecules with a charged head and a greasy tail that do the business.
In the “olden days”, people would mix animal fats (eg dipping from roast meat) with ashes from fire. Ashes contain strong bases like sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide (“potash”). Sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are drain cleaners — they dissolve fat, grease, skin, muscle, etc. The main problem is to get the amounts of ingredients right. Too much animal fats means you get lots of grease mixed with the soap (no good) and too much sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide means that you’d not only clean your hands, but also dissolve your skin (that’s why drain cleaners feel slippery: its your skin slipping off!). It’s much better to buy soap from the supermarket.
Hi Brianna and Jessica. Sorry it took me so long to get to your question. It depends on what type of soap you’d like. Like Kieran said, you can change the ingredients in the recipe to get soap to make soaps that do different things – washing your skin, washing your clothes and cleaning the drain!
I’m no soap expert but I do know one ingredient that’s in most commercially-produced soaps. “Sodium lauryl sulfate” – I know that because I’ve read it on the back of the soap dispenser while I’m in the shower.
Funny enough, we use that same chemical when we take the DNA out of cells during lab classes at uni. This chemical is only found in relatively small amounts in soaps and helps to remove the oil and grease when you wash. In our experiment, we use a much higher concentration, strong enough to break open the outside of cells so we can get the DNA out of there.
This isn’t something I know, but I’m pretty sure that, at least in the olden days, it was made from animal fat or lard. I doubt that it would be anymore though!
Haha you can do this just as well yourself, but I just googled it and one recipe I found does indeed require lard!
http://www.i4at.org/surv/soapmake.htm
What’s actually happening when you make soap is an acid-base reaction. You’ll probably hear about acid-base in chemistry. Lye is used as the base and oil or fat is the acid. When you mix them together a reaction occurs which produces a fatty acid salt (not like the one you eat!) which we know as soap.
I think you should give it a go and you can call yourself a saponificator!
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The purpose of soap is to get the grease on your face dissolved in water. Grease and water don’t mix – try adding oil to water. So soap molecules have a greasy end and at the other end is something that has an electrical charge, like an ion, which dissolves in water. Ions dissolve well – table salt is sodium chloride – two ions. The greasy end of the soap molecule is attracted to the grease. The charged end likes water. So the greasy molecule on your face is surrounded by the greasy end of the soap molecule, leaving all the charged ends on the outside. The result – the greasy molecule is carried off into the water, and down the sink. Result – nice clean face.
So if you want to make soap, you have to make these molecules. Yes, this used to be done by taking grease and making one end charged. You can do that with strong bases like lye. So it’s true you can make soap from fat. You can also make it from other things. There are lots of long molecules we can get from oil, and it’s pretty easy to change one end of them into a charged end. So you can also make soap from crude oil, kind of.
Of course, you also have to add nice smelly things to make the soap smell nice, and some colour (usually). On the ingredients of your soap it’ll say things like fragrance and aloe vera or something, and then there will be a bunch of things like “sodium oleate” or “sodium laureate” – words like that. Those are the long molecules with a charged head and a greasy tail that do the business.
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In the “olden days”, people would mix animal fats (eg dipping from roast meat) with ashes from fire. Ashes contain strong bases like sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide (“potash”). Sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are drain cleaners — they dissolve fat, grease, skin, muscle, etc. The main problem is to get the amounts of ingredients right. Too much animal fats means you get lots of grease mixed with the soap (no good) and too much sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide means that you’d not only clean your hands, but also dissolve your skin (that’s why drain cleaners feel slippery: its your skin slipping off!). It’s much better to buy soap from the supermarket.
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Hi Brianna and Jessica. Sorry it took me so long to get to your question. It depends on what type of soap you’d like. Like Kieran said, you can change the ingredients in the recipe to get soap to make soaps that do different things – washing your skin, washing your clothes and cleaning the drain!
I’m no soap expert but I do know one ingredient that’s in most commercially-produced soaps. “Sodium lauryl sulfate” – I know that because I’ve read it on the back of the soap dispenser while I’m in the shower.
Funny enough, we use that same chemical when we take the DNA out of cells during lab classes at uni. This chemical is only found in relatively small amounts in soaps and helps to remove the oil and grease when you wash. In our experiment, we use a much higher concentration, strong enough to break open the outside of cells so we can get the DNA out of there.
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Everyone has covered all the bases on this one. Nothing more to add from me.
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