Are they basically the same? Why can’t I wash my hair with dish soap and my clothes with shampoo? Would doing so clean said items better or worse?
In: Chemistry
Soap has a legal term in order to be called soap, it must be made from fatty acids and an alkali, like lye.
Most things you see are detergents.
To a certain extent, they are all doing the same thing, it is just each is optimized for the application.
You can wash your hair with dishsoap, but since it is designed to aggressively attack oils, it might be somewhat harsh, drying your hair out.
With clothes, the problem with shampoo is that it is designed to lather, put it in a clothes washer, the clothes would get clean…if the washer does not overflow with suds or the pump in it lock up due to the suds.
Both clean things using surfactants: molecules that grip dirt on one end and water on the other end, allowing them to pull dirt away from the object you’re cleaning. The surfactants in soap are created by a chemical reaction of oils and a strong alkali agent (saponification), whereas the surfactants in detergents are created by other chemical reactions.
There are two considerations for using them interchangeably like you’re asking: detergents are often more intense and better at stripping away grease, which may damage your hair over the long run; and those products will often contain other compounds like moisturizers, aloes, fragrance, etc that make them better suited to a particular task.
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