Not just the scents are at work here to make your bath more relaxing. Try this project and learn what salts can do.

Materials:

• Plastic mixing bowl
• 1 cup Epsom salt
• 1 cup sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon glycerin
• Fragrance or essential oils
• Colorant
• Liquid soap

What To Do:

1. Mix together the Epsom salt and sea salt in the mixing bowl.
2. Add glycerin to the salt mixture and mix through. The glycerin is not necessary, but it helps the colorant and oil get dispersed evenly through the salt.
3. Add a few drops of fragrance oils and a few drops of colorant. (Both of these items can be found at a local craft store.) We recommend getting skin-safe colorant from a craft store or else leaving out the colorant.
4. Wet your hands with tap water, add a drop of soap to your hands, then run together to form a lather. Observe how much lather forms, then rinse off your hands.
5. Fill a sink with water and add about an 1/8 cup of salt mixture to it. Use your hands to stir the water to help the salt dissolve. With your hands still wet from the salt water, add a drop of soap to your hands and rub them together to form a lather. How much lather formed this time?
6. Store the rest of your salts in a jar, keeping the lid on tight to keep moisture out. Use about 1/4 cup of the salts in your bath.

What's Happening?

You may have noticed that it was much easier to form lather (and more of it!) when using the water with salt rather than the water with no salt. This is because of the difference between hard water and soft water.

Most households in America have hard water. Hard water has a high mineral content, usually with calcium and magnesium, whereas soft water contains very little if any of these minerals. Generally, hard water is not a problem until it is used for cleaning purposes. The problem lies in the calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water - they react with the soap, forming insoluble gray flakes called soap scum rather than a lather. This results in more soap needed to get clean and the bathtub getting a grimy ring around it from the leftover soap scum. One way to soften hard bath water is to add bath salts. The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium and potassium ions from the salt, allowing the soap to lather much more easily. (If your home has soft water, you may not notice too much of a difference in how well the soap lathers in the water with your bath salts and the water without the bath salts.)

Another benefit of adding bath salts to your bath has to do with osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water through a membrane (such as your skin) to achieve equilibrium. Your body contains water and salt, whereas an ordinary bath contains mainly water and very little salt. Therefore, water will pass through your skin in an effort to balance the concentration of water and salt in you and in your bath. This excess water causes pruning. Adding bath salts to the water causes a more equal balance of salt and water in both you and in the bath, so less water enters your skin and less wrinkling occurs.