text: Soap is polarized at one end, and non-polar at the other.\n\nYou know how water and oil don't mix?  That's because water is polar and oil is non-polar.  As a rule, "Like dissolves like."  So polar things dissolve in water, non polar things dissolve in oil.  We call polar things "hydrophilic" ("water-loving"), while non-polar things can be called either hydrophobic ("water-fearing") or lipophilic ("oil-loving").  Since oil and water don't dissolve well in one another, they tend to separate from eachother.\n\nSoap is special because it is hydrophilic at one end and hydrophobic at the other.  This makes it act as a bridge between the two.  Oil gets washed away with soap because the soap molecule will orient itself around little droplets of oil with the hydrophobic end in the oil, leaving the hydrophilic end facing the water.  This allows the water to carry away the small droplets of oil packaged in a coat of soap, and hence cleans you by removing things not normally soluble in water.