Due the recent pandemic, All that we care about is to keep ourselves hygienic. Precautions like wearing a mask, to not touch our faces and wash ours hands several times a day. Coming to washing hands, Is soap water enough to eradicate the virus from our hands? What does soap water do to the virus?
The Corona virus that causes COVID-19 has an outer protective Bi-lipid layer. These lipids are pin shaped molecules whose heads are attracted to water, and the tails are phobic to water. Similarly, the outer structure of the virus break through the cell membrane and hijack our cells. This is where soap comes in, A single droplet of soap has millions of molecules called amphipiles, which resemble lipids.
The tails of amphipiles compete with the virus' bi-lipid layer for space. This causes a chaos in the outer membrane of the cell and hence can break the virus' membrane, making the whole organism crashing down. Then the amphipiles form clusters around the virus remains and become whole, which gets washed away with water.
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