Question: what is a fosil fule and what inspired u 2 b a scientist

Laurence Harwood answered on 18 Mar 2012:

Fossil fuels are coal, oil and gas. They are the remains of trees and plants (in the case of coal) or algae (oil and gas) that died hundreds of millions of years ago and gradually sank under the weight of more things being laid down on top of them. Over the millions of years the heat and pressure that developed, and the fact that there was no oxygen present, gradually transformed this once living tissue into material consisting mainly of carbon and hydrogen – hence the term “hydrocarbon” often used to describe oil. Sometimes in lumps of coal you can find imprints of leaves or bark of primitive trees from teh “carboniferous” period of archaelogy that look amazingly like tree ferns that still grow in New Zealand today. So they really are “fossil” fuels

Coal oil and gas are an amazing resource that is a result of tens of millions of years of life followed by hundreds of millions of years to be formed and we will rapidly use up most of the oil in just a few centuries. This cannot be allowed to continue for all sorts of reasons – pollution and global warming being two importat ones but simply because we will soon have no choice when it is all used up. Far better to change our ways of generating energy while we still have a choice.

I became inspired to be a scientist – or rather a chemist – by my chemistry teacher at secondary school – Mr Good. He made an agreement with my class that, as long as we wrote up all our work as homework, we would do nothing but experiments in school – and that is what we did. The first time I set fire to a piece of magnesium ribbon I was hooked.