Have you ever tried getting rid of dirt and oil with plain water? If you have, you can surely tell that most of the dirt still remains. The secret for cleaning is "surfactants". Surfactants perform important functions in cleaning; such as loosening, emulsifying (dispersing in water) and holding soil in suspension until it can be rinsed away. The composition of the soap is very interesting because it allows the combining of oil and water. It is surprising that a product containing oil can clean oil. We chose soap as our topic because we were curious about what soap is made of and how it works. We also wanted to know what factors in soap contribute to the cleaning process.

The topic of soap is very important since it is extremely important in medicine. During the 1800's, a doctor discovered that childbed fever was caused by the physicians and...