A Chemistry Experiment!
When the US Travel Team arrived last August in Muko, our first visit to Muko High School took us to the old Science Room, in which we heard from Senior 6 students, Joan Rukundo and Anxious Niwananya. One of the more interesting and potentially exciting experiments which students in the chemistry program at Muko High School (MHS) are engaged is making cleaning products, both ancient and modern varieties. Joan described her work in making bar soap. She performed a chemical reaction know as saponification by reacting caustic soda (lye or sodium hydroxide) with vegetable oil and pouring the added dye and perfume before the mixture hardened to improve esthetics. This reaction has been utilized for nearly 5,000 years. Archeologists have determined that Egyptians made cylinders of soap in a similar manner as early as 2,800 BCE.
A more recently discovered method to produce a commonly used cleaning agent was performed and described by Anxious. He reacted sulfuric acid with naturally occurring vegetable acids derived from coconut and other oils to make a liquid surfactant similar to Dawn detergent. In addition to being an effective cleaning agent, detergents have an advantage of not producing a "soap scum" that can coat the container and even the object being cleaned. He foresees not only using the detergent for cleaning floors, surfaces and the like at the high school but also offering it for sale in the community. Perhaps our MHS students will have a successful social business someday!
Here is Anxious with Muko High School in the background. He is thanking everyone for their support and talking about his excitement around the new Science Lab!
Great work. Let them also try liquid soap
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