Chemistry in our daily life

One day my son told me that Chemistry was a very boring subject.
He was wondering how it helps us in our daily life.

I told him that you cannot imagine a world without Chemistry.
Life has been made so easy with the knowledge of chemistry.
He was so amused with my statement.

Since he had returned after a tennis match, I asked him to have his bath first and then debate on this issue.
Just as he entered the bathroom, I heard him shout out for a soap.

There you are my son!
You need Chemistry to clean yourself!

Soap is a sodium or potassium salt of fatty acid.It is obtained by reacting alkali with oil or fat.This process is one of the well known saponification reaction.

It is made up of two parts viz the long hydrocarbon chain ,sometimes called its “tail”and the “carboxylate” head.The hydrocarbon part is hydrophobic while the carboxylate part is hydrophilic.

Due to this dual nature, the soap forms a bridge between the polar water molecule and the nonpolar oil molecule, when they are mixed.The soap acts as an emulsifier.When soap is mixed with water it forms micelles and trap the fat..Micelles are soluble in water and can be easily washed away.

Water can remove only salts.The dirt is usually associated with oil and it requires soap to remove it by forming micelle.

This is only one among the many applications of Chemistry, we come across in our daily life, my son.