A detergent is a chemical compound or mixture of compounds used as a cleaning agent. A soap is a cleaning agent that is composed of one or more salts of fatty acids. Thus, by its broad definition, detergent is an umbrella term that includes soaps and other cleaning agents with various chemical compositions. Often, however, the term detergent is used in a narrower sense to refer to synthetic cleaning agents that are not soaps (that is, not salts of...