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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Crude oil is a thick tar of hydrocarbons, it would clog up your engine if you put it in. It’s found in places underground where ancient algae has sat so long under heat and pressure that it became oil. Along with the oil, and sometimes on its own are lighter hydrocarbons that are gaseous at room temp/pressure like methane. These gaseous hydrocarbons are natural gas.
The hydrocarbons in oil are not very useful in their crude oil form, but they can evaporate, so you can slowly heat it up and distill them to separate them out. When you “refine” crude oil like this you get mixtures of subsets of the hydrocarbons present, one of these mixtures is kerosine, another is gasoline, diesel, asphalt tar etc. Some are further refined to be used in plastics, synthetic materials, drugs/chemicals etc.
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