Shashank Raj
- Nov 7, 2020
- 2 min read

How specifically soaps work to eliminate Covid-19 ?

Updated: Jan 14, 2021

Have you ever wondered how soaps work to eliminate Covid-19 virus from our hands, well in the simple terms they simply eliminate or just wash them off mostly from our hands.

Consequently, I read about soaps and their working principal on hands and clothes when I was in Grade 10, so I think I would be able to explain you too !

First lets have a graphical look at the Covid-19 virus....

Pic Credit: www.carehomeprofessional.com (Discovered during reading an article out there...)

So let's start off with what is guided to us all these days, we are said to wash-off our hands with water and soap thoroughly for around 20-30 seconds because there is a simple reason for the same.

We use soaps because water can atmost rinse off dust, dirt etc. because viruses and bacteria are too microscopic to be cleaned by water alone, therefore they require some chemicals to clean them off...

So lets understand what is a chemical composition of soap and how it's formed basically,

So soap is a water-soluble compound which is made via a process called saponification by the reaction between sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide with vegetable or animal oils (fat) .

I won't give you the chemical reaction(s) for saponification (That's another day job).

Now let's examine the soap molecule at microscopic level, so take a look at the graphic illustration for better understanding.

So after having a close look of it you might have got the in-depth of it and for now please keep these unknown terms in your curiosity box (we will surely open it one day together) because if I continue explaining these terms then it would deviate us from our standard blog topic for the day (Sorry for that....)

Now the insoluble part point towards and virus and the non-soluble part outwards and then what happens, (See it yourself below...)