Question

1. What is an amphiphilic molecule? How does this property influence the effectiveness of soaps?

2. Why was sud production used to assess the effectiveness of the synthesized soaps?

3. Explain the chemical reaction that occurs between soap molecules and the ions in hard water? How were the synthesized soaps affected by hard water?​​​​​​​

4. What is the difference between soaps and detergents? How did the detergent tested in this laboratory compare to the soaps in both distilled water and hard water?

5. Of the synthesized soaps produced from canola oil, corn oil, and coconut oil (samples 1 – 3), which soap had the best cleaning ability? Support your answer with the results recorded in Data Table 2.

Answer 1

1) Amphiphilic molecules are those having hydrophilic and lipophilic properties.

As it contains both polar and non-polar groups. It contains long chain fatty acid with polar group at one end.

Due to this property soap molecules being amphiphilic in nature arrange themselves in the form of micelles and thus leading to enhance effectiveness of the soap.

2) Sud production is used to access the effectiveness of synthesized soap as soap molecules form self assembled micelles which arrange themselves in such a way to form adequate structures which forms firm grip on the dirt.

3) Hard water contains sulphates of calcium and magnesium salt.

Thus calcium and magnesium ions are present in water which reacts with soap molecules in such a way to form calcium or magnesium salt of soap and sodium ions.

2 ​​RCOO^-Na⁺ + Ca^{​​​​​2+} (RCOO)₂Ca + 2Na⁺

Sodium stearate reacts with calcium ions to form calcium stearate and sodium ions

Where RCOOH is Stearic Acid