I’ve been in a contemplative mood in the shower recently, and I’ve been idly wondering about soap. Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m bored, I don’t know. Anyway, I have two dumb questions about soap.
Question #1: In the way of setup, let me tell you about a personal habit. I hate trying to soap up with the sliver you get at the end of a soap bar’s life. It doesn’t soap up well, and it tends to slip out of your hands more easily. I also can’t see throwing away good soap. So what I do is take a shower with a new bar, then at the end of the shower, soap up the sliver, and “glue” them together. The next morning, they’re joined together, albeit with a funky lump on one side.
I was contemplating such a lumpy bar of soap, when I thought about how it is worn down. Most of the soap goes down the drain, but a residue sticks to the wet bar, redistributing the soap. Soap that was in solid form on top gets moved to the bottom, and vice versa. So the question is, does the reside from the first sliver ever completely wash down the drain, or is a trace amount of it on the bar I’m using today?
Question #2: I once heard that soap is a fatty acid. I also know that the chlorine compound used to treat water is a base. So, when you wash with soap and (chlorinated) water, does that create salts? Are we actually depositing these salts on our skin?
You are not alone. I do the same thing with my soap.
I think it’s safe to say that the initial sliver will eventually wash entirely down the drain. I’ve performed the “sliver gluing” operation with soaps of different colors- a yellow sliver with a new white bar- and the yellow sliver has disappeared, although I do remember that it took 2 or 3 iterations of the sliver gluing operation for the yellow soap to entirely disappear.
i know there is a way to disolve old soap and make a new bar of “recycled” soap. im not 100% sure on the process but if your really want to save that soap then you’ll find out somewhere but personally i would just go out any buy a new bar…
I’m not sure about your melted soap. I would think it is much like a candle that is slowly melting away. Some old wax will overlap with new wax and blend. I’ve deliberately let a tiny sliver of soap sit on the drain until it dissolved (purely for experimental reasons, of course, not because I hate cleaning.) It took several days to dissolve completely.
Soap is made by the basic hydrolysis of fats; they are not fatty acids but the salts of fatty acids (As stated by Dr.Lao.) I believe that only something as strong as sodium hydroxide (lye) will succeed in hydrolizing the fat.
Pure soap will bond irrevocably with any mineral in your water to form that wretched soap scum that must be scrubbed off before your mother visits. (Products that are called “cleansers” are not pure soap and wash away more readily.)
I think you have the acidities wrong. Soap is alkaline if you dip pH paper in it. Chlorine makes the water minimally acidic if anything.
But the salts you thinking of are inorganic salts, such as NaCl. But these dissolve in water, they wouldn’t form a salt on your skin.
And anyway, chlorine would bond with soap. Soap molecules have two ends, one that bond with water molecules due the charges (not bonds). The other bonds with dirt particules. And there is too little chlorine in tap water to matter.
I have successfully performed a Soap Meld of a sliver of Irish Spring onto a new bar of Dial Gold. On the first try, the Dial Gold rejected the foreign soap sliver, but it finally took.
I think there’s a device known as ‘soap miser’ that allows you yo save up all the soap slivers, soften them (in a microwave IIRC) then compress them into a new cake of soap.
Just remember to pick all the little curly hairs off the slivers first
