Why are there so many options for vehicular gasoline at the pumps and what’s even the difference between them?
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Car engines generate power by spraying gas into a cylinder that has a piston at the top. The piston then moves down squeezing the gas/air mixture before the spark plug fires igniting the mixture which pushes the piston back up very strongly.
Gas is rated by octane which is a measure of how hard that mixture can be squeezed before it will explode without a spark. Engines in high performance cars squeeze the gas/air mixture hard enough that standard (87) gas would explode too early so they require more stable fuels (higher octane ratings).
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