On 7/28/2010 5:30 AM teabird spake thus:

A distinction needs to be made between soap and detergent. Soap will
not remove oils, you need a detergent for that. So washing clothes in
a washing machine will work, it uses a detergent. But washing with
soap and water will not work.

This is what's called a distinction without a difference.

Detergent *is* soap. (Of course, not all soap is detergent.) You could
look it up.

All soaps work basically the same way, by attracting and binding oils.
They may do it in different ways, or better or worse, but they all will
remove oils to some extent. (Soap is actually fairly magical stuff,
consisting of molecules that have one end that's polar and one that's
non-polar: the polar end is hydrophilic and attracts water, while the
non-polar end is hydrophobic and attracts oil.)

Soap and water *will* work, given enough soap and elbow grease.

Hey, I even ran across a web page that describes all this as it regards
poison ivy: http://poisonivy.aesir.com/view/soap.html


--
The fashion in killing has an insouciant, flirty style this spring,
with the flaunting of well-defined muscle, wrapped in flags.

- Comment from an article on Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com)