Book 22, Question 90
Where Does the Energy in Coal and Oil Come From?
Coal and oil are burned to make power. But where did their energy come from in the first place? The answer goes back millions of years!
More fun facts
- Coal holds energy stored by plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swampy forests.
- Over millions of years, layers of dirt and rock covered those plants.
- Pressure and heat slowly turned the buried plants into coal.
- Some US coal is between 100 million and 300 million years old.
- Crude oil formed from the remains of tiny sea plants and animals that lived before the dinosaurs.
- Coal, oil and natural gas are called fossil fuels because they formed from ancient living things.
Questions kids ask
Why can't we make more coal and oil?
They take a very long time to form, so the supply is limited to what we can dig or pump out of the earth.