Is this a chemical reaction?
Oh, another question: Why does hair conditioner feel warm when it gets on my hands?
Bleach is a base.
When you got it on your hands, it reacted with the oils on your hands to form a soap and glycerine (sp?).
And the reaction of the bleach base with your acidic hands releases heat.
If you took chemistry, you might remember ectothermic and endothermic reactions.
exothermic, not ectothermic
Ectothermic reactions refer to skinny guys falling asleep while sunbathing.
The reaction is called saponification. The base or alkaline substance reacted with the oils and fats in your skin, yielding heat, and creating a very mild soap, hence the slipperiness.
If you read about how our great grandparents made soap, it involved a vat of lye derived from wood ash runnings (base/alkaline) combined with fats collected from cooking.
Pick up a copy of Firefox for more detail.
Erp. That was Foxfire, not Firefox. Sorry-I confused my books with browsers. :smack: