Thursday, April 21, 2005
We're Raising Whiners
Play in the soap and get an itch. A number of Harvard students are complaining after spending hours playing in soap suds over the weekend -- apparently a regularly scheduled student event.
Chemistry lesson: Soap takes things that are normally insoluble in water, things like say skin oils, and makes them soluble and thus they wash away. The result if you spend too much time in it? Itchy dry skin.
The irritation they speak of has probably happened to every student that ever did this -- it happened to me when I soaped up a fountain as a prank in school, years ago, way past the statute of limitations. There is a solution -- skin lotion!
Chemistry lesson: Soap takes things that are normally insoluble in water, things like say skin oils, and makes them soluble and thus they wash away. The result if you spend too much time in it? Itchy dry skin.
The irritation they speak of has probably happened to every student that ever did this -- it happened to me when I soaped up a fountain as a prank in school, years ago, way past the statute of limitations. There is a solution -- skin lotion!
