Question

Is Soap a Salt?

Answer 1

We know that the soap is the sodium and potassium salt of organic fatty acid. Soap reacts with hard water forming scum. They are derived from the treatment of triglycerides with a strong base saponification.

Complete answer:
As we know the cleansing Action of Soaps: We know that dirt and grease are oily and these oily substances do not dissolve in water. In the case of soaps, the non-polar carbon chain being lyophilic dissolves in oil and the ionic end which is the carboxylate part being hydrophilic dissolves in water. This leads to the formation of cleansing structures called micelles. The composition of soaps is sodium stearate and composition of detergents is generally sodium perborate which leads to an alkaline solution.
As generally dirt is acidic, hence the detergent solution must be alkaline to neutralize them and clean them. We can say that the soap could be a salt of fatty acid. Because, the soap could be a mixture of a weak acid and a robust base, that result in salt, conjointly referred to as the alkali salt. Generally, salts are thought of as ionic compounds that are formed by the neutralization of the acid and therefore the base associate degree of equal variety of cations and anions. Detergents generally are derivatives of alkylbenzene sulfonates, that is a family of compounds that are similar to soap but are more soluble in hard water, due to the reason that the polar part of detergents i.e. sulfonate is less likely than the polar part of soap i.e. carboxylate to bind to ions such as calcium and magnesium commonly found in hard water.

Note:
Remember that the dual nature of detergents facilitates the removal of the mixture of common hydrophobic impurities like oil and grease with water. It is a fact that air is not hydrophilic, which is the reason why different detergents show varying degrees of foaming. Detergent Solutions being a common glycol base derivative are basic.