[tvirus]

Hello everyone. I am doing a chemistry assignment in which I'm expected to explain a bunch of things that our teachers haven't taught us. I have to talk about how baking soda and vinegar can be used to clean fats and oils in my assignment, but I really don't know how this works and can't find any information on it (at least not for vinegar).

I do however know that in water, baking soda dissolves into the bicarbonate anion and the sodium ion. Apparently, the bicarbonate anion then dissolves into the hydroxide ion and carbonic acid in the water. Apparently, the hydroxide ions allow nonpolar fats and oils to mix with polar water. I was thinking of using stearic acid as an example to show how that fatty acid would react with the hydroxide ion to produce two substances that can combine with polar water. But I don't know how this reaction works and I haven't got a clue about how the acetic acid in vinegar works as a cleaner!

Someone gave me this formula to show how the hydroxide ions work with the acid, but I don't know what substance is being represented (other than the hydroxide ion):

R1-COOR2 + OH- ---> R1-COO- + R2-OH

[cliverlong]

You have some of the ideas already.

I looked up "fats" in wikipedia. The first couple of sentences in the first two sections give key information about the structure

Chemistry is very influenced by bonds between atoms. What particular bond type occurs in every fat and oil.?

What type of chemical is vinegar? How does that differ from the hydroxide you have been pointed at?

How does either of those two types of chemical act on this bond holding fat or oils together?

Clive