Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

— Photo: K. MURALI KUMAR

Hyderabad

Unlike other surfaces, the palm of our hand has many grooves, both visibly obvious and others, finer. They are one of the few anatomical aspects of the external body which are unique to an individual and, in fact, unique to that hand in the entire human population.

This is the pattern on which palmists make predictions for individuals, of course, with no scientific validity and forensic scientists investigate finger prints, of course, with scientific validity because no two hands in the world can have identical finger prints, leave alone palm prints.

Anyway these are not lines on the surface of the palm but grooves on the palm.

The hand skin on palm’s side is thicker, tougher and fibrous to withstand hardship and wear and tear because it is from this area that hands perform many of the wakeful human functions.

At the same time, such thick and tough skin has to be attached to the muscular and vascular layers of the hand for sustenance, base and support. The grooves serve as welding spots that join two sheets of metals intimately. When we wash hands, a lot of water seeps into these fine grooves. Even if we shake our hands, there is some water leftover in the grooves due to capillarity within the fine groves.

If we use soap along with water, the soap molecules (in fact, sodium or potassium salts of long chain fatty acids), with their polar and hydrophilic (water-loving) heads inward and non-polar hydrophobic (water-hating) tails outward, sink into this water and maintain colonies (known as micelles) of the soap molecules in these fine grooves till such time the water is dried by warmth or towelling.

Fresh water, used for washing hands after applying soap, cannot sweep away all these colonies as they are sunk deeper inside and along the grooves. That is why the soapy feeling lasts longer even after washing our hands with water. Since such type of dense and finer groove-like pattern is not present on other surfaces of the skin, the soap is washed off readily along with the cleansing water.

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, WARANGAL

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail