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You jump in the shower, squirt some body wash on the puff, and
scrub, scrub, scrub, until you're covered in a creamy, rich
layer of lovely, bubbly froth. Ahhhhhhhh.... There's something so pleasing about enveloping yourself in a fluffy coat of suds, a sense that those bubbles are really getting you clean. And the more bubbles there are, the better they're doing their job. So how do bubbles work? How do they get your skin clean? The truth is, the soap itself is getting you clean, and the bubbles are simply a side effect of the vigorous meeting of soap and water. Here's how soap works. At least, here's how natural soap works: |
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| Normally, water alone
is not very good at getting you clean. All the oil, grease, dirt,
and other stuff that you can't rinse off is hydrophobic, meaning it
won't "stick" to water - when you rinse, the water just slides right
over the gunk without taking it off. So how can you make the water stick to the gunk so you can rinse it off? This is where the soap comes in. Natural soap molecules are long and skinny. One end of the molecule (the hydrophilic end) is attracted to water, and the other end (the hydrophobic end) is attracted to the gunk on your skin. Voila! The water molecule is now attached to the oil/grease/gunk molecule, with a soap molecule acting as the glue between them. And when you rinse, the water can take the whole water-soap-gunk trio with it. The "bubbly-ness" of soap is simply a property of the oils used to make the soap. Coconut oil, for example, creates lots of bubbles, while almond oil creates almost none - both oils are both effective in removing gunk, but one will give you bubbles, while the other will not. The moral of the story is, when you're using natural soap, bubbles really aren't an indication of how well it's working. From an aesthetics point of view, however, bubbles are fun and relaxing, and make you "feel" like you're getting clean. So, given a choice, I'll take mine extra bubbly, please. |
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