Soap dispenser

A soap dispenser is a device that, when manipulated or triggered appropriately, yields soap (usually in small, single-use quantities). It can be manually operated by means of a handle, or can be automatic. Soap dispensers are often found in public restrooms.

Design

Manual soap dispensers

The design of a manual soap dispenser is generally determined by whether the soap comes in liquid, powder, or foam form.

When soap is dispensed in liquid form, it is generally in a squeeze bottle or pump. The most popular soap dispensers of this type are plastic pump bottles, many of which are disposable.

William Shepphard patented liquid soap on August 22, 1865. Minnetonka Corporation introduced the first modern liquid soap and cornered the market by buying up the entire supply of the plastic pumps needed for the liquid soap dispensers.

Dispensers of powder soaps, such as borax, often take the form of a metal box with a weighted lever; when the lever is pressed, a handful of soap is released.

Manual dispensers of foam soap often consist of a large button which squeezes the foam out of a tube. Many liquid soap dispensers operate in this way as well. A few dispensers operate with a lever that pulls forward and squeezes the soap out.

Mr. Bubble

Mr. Bubble is a brand of bath products made by The Village Company. The brand is the #1 brand of bath products in the United States according to AC Nielsen Data. The brand's slogan is "Makes Getting Clean Almost as Much Fun as Getting Dirty!". In 2011 Mr. Bubble celebrated its 50th birthday.

History

Mr. Bubble was invented by Harold Schafer and the Gold Seal Company in North Dakota, USA, in 1961. Gold Seal manufactured and distributed Mr. Bubble (and Snowy Bleach) until 1986 when it was sold to Airwick Industries which was soon purchased by Reckitt & Coleman. R&C sold the brand to J.W. Childs Assoc as a part of their Personal Care Group, Inc. Ascendia Brands, Inc. purchased Mr. Bubble in 2005 from Playtex Products which had acquired the Personal Care Group in 1997. In August 2008, Ascendia Brands, Inc. filed for bankruptcy. The Village Company LLC, a supplier of brand-name bath, shower, and personal care products in Chaska, Minnesota, purchased the Mr. Bubble Brand from Ascendia Brands in October 2008. A purchase price was not disclosed.

Bubble bath

A bubble bath is a filled bathtub with a layer of surfactant foam on the surface of the water and consequently also the surfactant product used to produce the foam. Less commonly, aerated or carbonated baths are called bubble baths.

Bubbles on top of the water, less ambiguously known as a foam bath (see photo), can be obtained by adding a product containing foaming surfactants to water and temporarily aerating it by agitation (often merely by the fall of water from a faucet). The practice is popular for personal bathing because of the belief that it cleanses the skin , that the foam insulates the bath water, keeping it warm for longer, and (as a lime soap dispersant) prevents or reduces deposits on the bath tub at and below the water level (called "bathtub ring" and soap scum, respectively) produced by soap and hard water. It can hide the body of the bather, preserving modesty or, in theatre and film, giving the appearance that a performer who is actually clothed is bathing normally. Children find foam baths particularly amusing, so they are an inducement to get them into the bathtub.

Foam

A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid. A bath sponge and the head on a glass of beer are examples of foams. In most foams, the volume of gas is large, with thin films of liquid or solid separating the regions of gas.

An important division of solid foams is into closed-cell foams and open-cell foams. In a closed-cell foam, the gas forms discrete pockets, each completely surrounded by the solid material. In an open-cell foam, the gas pockets connect with each other. A bath sponge is an example of an open-cell foam: water can easily flow through the entire structure, displacing the air. A camping mat is an example of a closed-cell foam: the gas pockets are sealed from each other so the mat cannot soak up water.

Foams are examples of dispersed media. In general, gas is present in large amount so it will be divided into gas bubbles of many different sizes (the material is polydisperse) separated by liquid regions which may form films, thinner and thinner when the liquid phase is drained out of the system films. When the principal scale is small, i.e. for a very fine foam, this dispersed medium can be considered as a type of colloid.

Soap

In chemistry, soap is a salt of a fatty acid. Consumers mainly use soaps as surfactants for washing, bathing, and cleaning, but they are also used in textile spinning and are important components of lubricants.

Soaps for cleansing are obtained by treating vegetable or animal oils and fats with a strongly alkaline solution. Fats and oils are composed of triglycerides; three molecules of fatty acids attach to a single molecule of glycerol. The alkaline solution, which is often called lye (although the term "lye soap" refers almost exclusively to soaps made with sodium hydroxide), brings about a chemical reaction known as saponification.

In this reaction, the triglyceride fats first hydrolyze into free fatty acids, and then these combine with the alkali to form crude soap: an amalgam of various soap salts, excess fat or alkali, water, and liberated glycerol (glycerin). The glycerin, a useful by-product, can remain in the soap product as a softening agent, or be isolated for other uses.

Soaps are key components of most lubricating greases, which are usually emulsions of calcium soap or lithium soap and mineral oil. These calcium- and lithium-based greases are widely used. Many other metallic soaps are also useful, including those of aluminium, sodium, and mixtures of them. Such soaps are also used as thickeners to increase the viscosity of oils. In ancient times, lubricating greases were made by the addition of lime to olive oil.