Q 01/05

Evidence of soap-like materials being made goes back to around 2800 BC in which ancient civilisation?

A) Ancient Greece

B) The Indus Valley

C) Shang China

D) Babylon

Answer · why

D) Babylon

Proto-soaps mixing fat and alkali turn up in Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian texts.

Q 02/05

What is the name of the chemical reaction that turns fats and an alkali such as lye into soap?

A) Fermentation

B) Saponification

C) Emulsification

D) Esterification

Answer · why

B) Saponification

Saponification is the reaction in which fats or oils are hydrolysed by an alkali such as lye (sodium hydroxide), yielding soap and glycerol.

Q 03/05

Ivory soap's famous slogan, introduced in 1891, was what?

A) Pure as Snow

B) Softer Than Silk

C) It Floats!

D) Cleans Like Magic

Answer · why

C) It Floats!

'It Floats!' was Ivory's 1891 slogan, trading on bars whipped with air so they bobbed in the bath; its other tagline claimed 99 and 44/100 percent pur...

Q 04/05

Sunlight, launched by Lever Brothers in 1884, is described as the world's first what?

A) Machine-safe liquid dish soap

B) Boxed soap flakes for wool

C) Perfumed bath bar for export

D) Packaged, branded laundry soap

Answer · why

D) Packaged, branded laundry soap

Sunlight was the world's first packaged, branded laundry soap, sold in wrapped tablets instead of cut from a slab; its profits built Port Sunlight, Le...

Q 05/05

Persil, launched by Henkel in 1907, took its name from silicate and which bleaching agent?

A) Percarbonate

B) Permanganate

C) Perborate

D) Perchlorate

Answer · why

C) Perborate

Persil fuses PERborate and SILicate: sodium perborate released oxygen bleach in the wash, letting Henkel sell it in 1907 as the first 'self-acting' la...