the difference between hard & soft water 😣
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**TL;DR:** *The amount of certain dissolved minerals in it. Soft has very little, hard has a lot.*
You’ve seen pictures of caves with stalactites and stalagmites, right? The pointy rocks and columns that form due to trickling water over thousands of years?
Those are caused by hard water. It’s basically water that has dissolved tiny tiny amounts of certain types of rock so it has a little mineral content. Water droplets leave it behind when they dry or drip off a point, and it eventually builds up.
Soft water doesn’t have those minerals. If the source of the water doesn’t contact and flow across or through rocks, it doesn’t pick up and dissolve anything. That’s why rain water and fresh-water lakes often have “softer” water than wells and other underground sources.
Hard water is bad for a couple reasons. First one is the mineral content also gets deposited over time on things the water touches, like the inside of your house pipes or the windows you’re washing or your shower’s walls and curtain. So it leaves spots on surfaces and can eventually plug up pipes or showerheads and reduce their flow. If it’s bad enough, you can even feel its deposits on your skin after that shower.
Second is the minerals interfere with how other chemicals like soap work. The soap kinda gets distracted by the minerals and doesn’t do as good of a job. A hard water bubble bath requires a lot more soap to make, as an example, and dishes don’t come out as clean from the dishwasher.
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