AY Honors/Soap Craft - Advanced/Answer Key 2

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1. Have the Soap Craft Honor.

For tips and instruction see Soap Craft.

2. What safety equipment should be used when making soap with and without lye?

With lye - Safety glasses, long sleeves, long pants, gloves, close toe shoes, hair net or head covering, mask, accurate scale

Without Lye - Pot holder, hair net or hair covering, gloves, accurate scale.

3. Name three types of lye. Explain what lye is and why it is needed to make soap.

• sodium hydroxide (NaOH)
• potassium hydroxide (KOH)
• lithium hydroxide (LiOH)

Additionally

• rubidium hydroxide (RbOH)
• cesium hydroxide (CsOH)

Lye is a strong alkali which is highly soluble in water, producing caustic, basic solution. The Lye is needed to react with the fat to form a new product which is a surfactant. Surfactants are molecules that spontaneously bond with each other, in the case of Lye and fat, they form soap.

4. Describe what happens when a strong base is added to an oil or fat. What is it called?

When a triglyceride (fat, oil or lipid) is treated with a strong base (lye), it cleaves the ester bond, releasing fatty acid salts (soaps) and glycerol.

          Saponification

5. What makes “hard” soap versus “soft” soap?

Hard soap is made with sodium hydroxide where soft/liquid soap is made with potassium hydroxide.

6. What types of fats can be used in making soap?

Vegetable such as olive oil, corn, palm, coconut.

Also animal fats such a tallow and lard.

7. What is used in making soap transparent?

Transparent soap is simply hot process soap that uses solvents (sugar, glycerin and alcohol) to dissolve the soap crystals that form allowing light to pass, therefore creating transparency.

8. What are the advantages and disadvantages of soap and detergent?

Soap is biodegradable, derived from natural sources but is does not work well in cold water and forms soap scum. Detergent works in all temperatures and in saline water, does not form scum but it is not biodegradable and make from syntactic materials.

9. What makes soap float?

Air is whipped into the soap as it hardens.

10. Learn the following verses: Jeremiah 2:22, Malachi 3:2.

For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before Me,” says the Lord God.
— Jeremiah 2:22 (NKJV)

“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap.
— Malachi 3:2 (NKJV)

11. Identify some things that can be added to soap.

Essential oils, perfumes, seeds as scrubbers, colorants

12. What can be used as soap molds? Discuss what should not be used and why.

Wood molds lined with parchment paper, silicone molds and forms that will not react with the lye. Do not use aluminum as the lye will dissolve the surface, wood by it self as it will absorb the liquid soap.

13. Describe six methods of making soap. Note which ones do not require the use of lye and explain why it is not needed.

Melt & pour, rebatch, cold process, hot process, oven process and liquid.

Melt & pour and rebatch do not need lye