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) caesium hydroxide (CsOH)

Lye is a strong alkali which is highly soluble in water producing caustic basic solutions. The Lye is need to react with the fat to form a new product which is a surfactants. Surfactants are molecules that spontaneously bond with each other, in the case of Lye and fact 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 vats such a tallow, lard…

7. What is used in making soap transparent?

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

9. What makes soap float?

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.

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

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

14. Make two soap projects. One using the melt and pour method and the other using the rebatching method.

15. Do one of the following:

a. Visit a soap-making establishment, commercial or non-commercial.

b. Watch a video about how cold process soap is made.

c. Write a report, tell a story, or use some other creative means to explain how soap is made.

References