thumb|Schematic diagram of a [[micelle of oil in aqueous suspension, such as might occur in an emulsion of oil in water. In this example, the surfactant molecules' oil-soluble tails project into the oil (blue), while the water-soluble ends remain in contact with the water phase (red).]]
A surfactant is a molecule with one end that dissolves in water and another end that dissolves in oil, allowing it to bridge these two normally separate substances. This property makes surfactants useful for mixing oil and water together in products like soaps, detergents, and emulsions.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
via PubMed
thumb|Schematic diagram of a [[micelle of oil in aqueous suspension, such as might occur in an emulsion of oil in water. In this example, the surfactant molecules' oil-soluble tails project into the oil (blue), while the water-soluble ends remain in contact with the water phase (red).]]
A surfactant is a chemical compound that decreases the surface tension or interfacial tension between two liquids, a liquid and a gas, or a liquid and a solid. The word surfactant is a blend of "surface-active agent", coined in 1950. As they consist of a water-repellent and a water-attracting part, they are emulsifiers, enabling water and oil to mix. They can also form foam, and facilitate the detachment of dirt.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).