Question: Why does soap clean and how?

Shreesha Bhat answered on 17 Mar 2015:

Well, lets say you have some oily and greasy stuff on your shirt, and you want to remove it. Well, now you are trying to wash with gallons of water, still it doesnt go. That means the dirt/greasy stuff hates water, and is insoluble in water. Now, you need something which can take away the dirt (that means, it should be quite non-polar) as well be can be used with water (should also have something polar so that it can form hydrogen bond with water).

This something would be soap, which has two ends- one hydophilic (water loving) end which has carboxylate ion, another hydrophobic (water fearing or water hating) end made of long hydrocarbon chains. When you add soap in water, the water fearing long chains get together and form a micelle (just google it, you will get how a micelle looks like). basically, micelle is a sphere with each soap molecule arranged in such a way that water loving part stays outside of the sphere (it stays outside, because it loves water, remember) and the hydrocarbon chains stay inside. These micelles break the greasy/oily stuff and take them inside (as both are water fearing), and make the surface clean.

Hope i have made it simple enough, if any doubts do tell!