How to Make Soap for a Science Project
- 1). Place approximately 10 grams of a fat, such as lard, butter or oil in your glass beaker.
- 2). Add 15 mL of sodium hydroxide in the glass beaker. For safety reasons, make sure an adult wearing eye protection slowly adds the sodium hydroxide into the glass beaker.
- 3). Add 50 mL of ethanol alcohol into the glass beaker.
- 4). Heat the glass beaker on a low temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. Stir the mixture of alcohol, lard and sodium hydroxide with a stirring rod, preferably a glass-stirring rod. Stir until the mixture reacts to the lard.
- 5). Add 20 mL of water into the glass beaker once the mixture has reacted. Stir with stirring rod.
- 6). Cool your base mixture. The base mixture is the mixture of sodium hydroxide, lard and ethanol alcohol. Combine 12 grams of table salt and 50 mL of water in a separate glass beaker.
- 7). Pour the mixture that you just cooled into the table salt mixture. Wait for the mixture to completely cool, which may take several hours.
- 8). Pour the soap into a soap mold and wait for it to harden overnight.
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