I am a 27-year-old mother and fiancé. My goal is to complete my science prerequisite classes with 4.0’s so that I can apply to the Physician Assistant program at Western Michigan University. I graduated in 2015 with a Bachelors in Criminal Justice from WMU and I am currently working as a Medical Assistant. I have a son named Lorenzo, his first birthday is a couple hours away! In my very limited free time I like to work out through a program called Fit Body Boot Camp. Outside of Michigan, I’ve traveled to Ohio, Florida and I’ve studied abroad in the Dominican Republic for four months. The Dominican Republic was fascinating! The people were kind, our excursions were memorable, and the warm weather was incredible! The only con was the abundance …show more content…
I am employed at Borgess Hospital and in our office bathroom there is a sign to remind employees to wash their hands properly. This topic gets brought up frequently during staff meetings and we even have a few posters around the office. The instructions include 1. Wet hands with warm water 2. Apply soap 3. Lather well 4. Rub hands vigorously for at least 20 seconds 5. Rinse well 6. Dry hands with a clean paper towel. I’ve never had to think about chemistry being connected to our society, but almost everything is chemistry related; for example, the soaps we use to wash our hands are made up of potassium salts of fatty acids. The process to make soap is called saponification, which involves heating fats and oils and reacting them with a liquid alkali. When the alkali is sodium hydroxide, hard soap is formed “bar soap” and when the alkali is potassium hydroxide, a potassium soap is formed “liquid soap”. A question I have about soap is... If the effectiveness of soap is reduced when used in hard water, why is it that many health care settings have hard water? The hardness in water is from mineral salts, for example- (Ca) calcium, (Mg) magnesium, (Fe) iron and (Mn) manganese. These mineral salts react with soap and form