What Kind of Soaps Float in Water? And Why?

Many types of objects from giant ships to people and other sort of materialistic things easily float on the water you know why? The main reason behind this is the science of water molecules. Thanks to the hydrogen bonds, what happens is that these molecules bind to each other very strongly, as a result, these hydrogen bonds are formed, these bonds act as a membrane on the water surface. This property of water is called the surface tension of water. Now because of these bonds, the water molecules can support various types of small objects like soaps, insects and other several objects.

Various things float with different velocity, sometimes huge ships have no problem while floating on water and sometimes even small needles can sink in water. This theory of water floating objects will confuse so many people and why it should not, this theory solely depends on water chemistry and hydrogen bonds present in water. This is also referred to as water tension and that is what creates water tension for repelling different types of objects and setting them afloat while sinking most of them.

Some real-world experience concerning the soap floating

Now you must have seen this thing like different objects floating whereas so many of them sink

many times in your lifetime. Now, this raises so many questions in the mind that exactly this phenomenon happens and what is the reason behind it. But If I have to ask you about some daily life experiences have you ever seen a single drop of water patiently sitting on your car window? Or any other place. The answer will be no I am sure because these little drops always flatter or splash very quickly. Or maybe you have ever seen why raindrops always fall spherical? The answer to that will be these drops are attracted to each other tightly so they form a spherical shape. Coming back to the topic If you are someone who washes dishes on a daily basis you will see that these soaps make your life easier. Did you ever ask yourself how these soaps or dishwashers do that? The answer to that question involves some kitchen science, so, these dishwashers or soaps called surfactants to do is break down the food particles and make their new bonds with water so that dissolving them becomes easy. Not only soap but they also break water molecules.

The theory behind dishwasher soaps floats

So all of such dish soaps or dishwashers work as breaking the surface tension for the water. So what happens is that as a result all the objects floating on the water will immediately sink or maybe change the shape with the change in the surface tension. In this article, you will get to know if soaps float on water if yes then how? To conclude we will do a little experiment for that we need some things such as

As far as this theory is concerned only ivory brand’s soaps can float on water.

There are many types of soap brands that float on water one of them is ivory soap. So what happens is that when you break that soap bar into different pieces you will see that it does not have the large pores for air inside. So from that, we conclude that the soap’s density is lower than water. Another reason why Ivory soap floats on water is that air is introduced into the soup while manufacturing it. So to find it out if it ever happens that you want to break the soap into many pieces you will notice that at the end of it there are very tiny pockets of air. So cutting your soaps with a knife makes it hard to spot little air pockets that are exposed to air.

How do these floating soaps come into existence?

Discovering these water floating soaps was not planned; it just happened as an accident in 1890 by a worker at an industry named Procter and gamble. While working on a mixed batch of soap the workers forgot to turn off the mixing machine because they were in a hurry to catch the lunch break, as a result so much air was mixed with the soap, as a result, this soap batch got doubled in size. This weird and new property made it possible for soaps to float on water. When they were formed into the bars and brought into the market as a surprise, the public loved that. There were zero complaints and most probably the public loved them. So this behaviour encouraged Procter and gamble to continue whipping the air into the soap not only this but they named their new accidental creation as the soap they can float or the soap that floats.

Apart from these floating experiences one thing that still sticks in mind and that is why these soaps expand in the microwave? Now this question is very much similar to what we call why popcorn pops in the microwave? Why do these marshmallows give the same behaviour? The answer is similar to the one in the soap and that is these bubbles in the soaps, popcorns or marshmallows contain water molecules. Water is also present in the little pores of soap. So when this water is heated in the microwave this water gets vaporized as a result that air trapped in the pores escapes

At last, while summing up whatever we have learnt so far in this article I would conclude that we have learnt some very basic chemistry of water molecules about their nature, how they create bonds, the real life experiences of consumers and what not also how they repel different objects. What is it in there that makes soaps float on water and other giant objects? At last, we had some very common examples like popcorns or marshmallows, how they pop while heating, why any kind of soap expands while heating and all of such things.