Ex: soap cleans oil, oil cleans tree sap, but soap doesn’t clean tree sap
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It all just has to do with how molecules bond or are attracted to each other.
Water can’t clean oil because soap and water repel each other.
Soap is attracted to both water and oil, so it can be used as a middle man to clean up oil, it pulls the oil away with the water.
Oil is helpful for tree sap because it’ll be attracted to the tree sap and get between the tree sap and your skin, allowing you to wipe away the resulting mixture off your skin with relative ease. Soap does not really get between the sap and your skin like oil does, so washing wish soap required a lot of physical scrubbing to break up the sap.
It does, but poorly.
For one, soap is the stuff on a bar in your bathtub, it’s rarely used anymore. Most cleaners are detergents, and here’s the difference.
Soap makes things slippery. Washing does the removal, soap simply prevents it from re-adhering. Detergents dissolve (mostly oily) things making them water based again.
So how does oil fit in. Just as water dissolves sugar, oil dissolves wax. Diesel can take wax or sap off your shoes, but not candy.
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