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Materials in Our Daily Life

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Materials in Our Daily Life : 95 :

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Materials in Our Daily Life
The basic aim of science is not only to study and understand natural phenomena but also to use this knowledge to make our lives more comfortable. Science and technology have enabled us to develop more economical and convenient methods to recover useful materials from nature and to put them to various uses. Chemistry has enabled us to synthesize new materials which have desired properties, thus, making them even better than natural materials. We need different types of materials to meet our daily needs. Some of them are obtained from nature while others are prepared by man. The materials that we get from nature are called natural materials. Wood, silk, cotton, leather, …show more content…

Soaps are sodium or potassium salts of long chain organic acids (called fatty acids) like stearic acid and palmitic acid. How is soap manufactured? Soap is made by heating oil with sodium hydroxide. The oil and sodium hydroxide solution are fed into an enclosed reaction vessel under high pressure and heated at high temperature. At this temperature, the reaction is completed in a few minutes. The mixture of soap and glycerol is cooled and a concentrated solution of sodium chloride is added. Glycerol dissolves readily in salt solution but soap does not. So, solid soap separates out from the mixture. It is then removed by centrifugation. While still hot it is sprayed into a hot vacuum chamber to dry it. Perfume is added and the particles are compressed into soap cake.

Materials in Our Daily Life : 97 :

The basic materials used to manufacture soap are animal fats (lard) or vegetable oils (olive oil, neem oil, etc.) and an alkali, usually sodium hydroxide. Fats and oils are compounds of organic acids (containing 12–14 carbon atoms) and glycerol (commonly called glycerine). When the fat or oil is heated with sodium hydroxide solution, the acids are broken away from glycerol and are neutralized by the alkali to form soap. Soaps produce lather (foam) with soft water. With hard water, which contains calcium and magnesium salts in it, they do not produce lather. Instead they themselves are precipitated as insoluble salts of calcium and

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