Pretty much title. I never got a full understanding of what gas is. Is it short for gasoline? Does it mean something else? Is it a solid, like oil? Or is it a gas, like… gas? What goes in my car and what runs my oven? Are they different? Are they the same? Is natural gas the same as oil…?
You get the idea, and I would love to finally understand what gas is. Thanks!
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Some of it is just a matter of coincidence. It’s actually really funny how gasoline got its name. First of all let get things in context. “GAS” just means the state of matter meaning like air or water, basic elementary chemistry definition. It does not mean oil. But “PETROLEUM” meaning “Rock+oil” or its raw form crude oil, where gasoline and natural gas comes from, has one certain chactareristic, it forms a very distinct smelly “gaseous vapor” (like water vapor wich is a state of matter). Solid, liquid, gas and plasma.
Ok now I’m going in a tangent here, but I need to explain this. So there was this guy back 19th century called John Cassell that patented a certain refined formulation of petrol oil that he marketed as “Cazeline oil” named after him. Well at that time, cazeline oil was the one of best petrol you can buy. As you expect lots of knock-offs brand came to be, one of it are Gazoline and Gasoline. The thinking was “Well petrol produce this smelly gas, why not name it gasoline instead of cazeline”. The name gasoline was never patented, so it took off as the most common offbrand name of petrol. Then later just becomes the second name for petrol.
Century later just shorten to just gas, cause apparently gasoline has too much syllables.
So thats how, :
Gas – a state of matter.
Natural gas – a gaseous form of fuel on the same source of crude oil. And
Gas – a shorten name of gasoline, another name of petrol oil
Came to be.
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