Mondo Knows Facts
Detergent lifts grease by wrapping it in micelles
Surfactant molecules cage oil droplets so water can carry them away A surfactant molecule has a water-loving head and an oil-loving tail. In a wash the tails bury themselves in grease while the heads face outward, forming a ball called a micelle that water can suspend. Agitation supplies the energy to pull the droplet off the fabric, which is why detergent alone cleans poorly. It sits in Mondo's everyday life collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: cleaning, chemistry, laundry
Detergent lifts grease by wrapping it in micelles: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Surfactant molecules cage oil droplets so water can carry them away. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a everyday life fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Everyday Life shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.