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Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.
- gasoline - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
Perhaps the most widely used product refined from petroleum is gasoline. Gasoline is burned in an internal-combustion engine to provide energy to power automobiles, airplanes, and other machinery. In some English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom, gasoline is referred to as petrol. Gasoline is a complex mixture containing hundreds of different hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are compounds comprised of the chemical elements hydrogen and carbon. Most of the hydrocarbons in gasoline contain 4 to 12 carbon atoms per molecule, but they differ widely in structure. Gasoline is useful as an automobile fuel because it easily evaporates to a gas, or vaporizes, even at ordinary temperatures. When it is burned, it releases a great deal of energy. This energy of combustion can be contained within a system to do work such as drive an engine (see internal-combustion engine; petroleum).