[patel]

Hi, I'm a grade 12 student taking chemistry, and recently we made soap in a lab experiment, and during the reactions, I had a couple questions that need answering.

1) Do the oils/fats (we used veg oil and veg shortening) and lyes (we used NaOH) used in saponification have to be in specific proportions? Also, does it matter if we use vegetable oil or animal fat as one of the reactants, is one necessarily better than the other? I've read that depending on the proportions of the reactants, the soap will be either a good or poor quality, but im not so sure.

2) We used pH paper to indicate the progress of its curing, and I'm wondering why pH can be used to indicate its progress?


Thanks for all your help

[billnotgatez]

What was the pH you had to have compared to what it was at the beginning?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saponification
The above link points to many other links about soap

It also says

Saponification is the hydrolysis of an ester under basic conditions to form an alcohol and the salt of a carboxylic acid. Saponification is commonly used to refer to the reaction of a metallic alkali (base) with a fat or oil to form soap.

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