Help with a physics disussion question?

Question

Discussion question: Where, exactly, does the energy stored in oil come from? How can we get "work" from oil? In your discussion, try to use the words work, energy, heat, power, and conservation in their correct physical sense.

Answer 1

The energy comes from the difference in chemical bonding energies before and after burning the oil fuel. The starting chemicals are the fuel molecules made of chains of carbon bonded to hydrogen atoms. The crude oil molecules range from a simple one-carbon methane, two-carbon ethane, three-carbon propane, all the ways to over twenty carbon atoms per molecule.

These carbon to hydrogen bonds are meta-stable and are readily torn asunder so that external oxygen atoms can take both carbon atoms to make carbon dioxide, and hydrogen atoms to make water vapor molecules. This reaction burns oil into CO2 and H2O and releases lots of chemical energy in the form of heat.

Answer 2

theres a great deal of hydrogen in oil,some quantity of sulphur, and carbon also, in the burning process , oxygen in the cylinder begins to combine with the hydro carbon molicules and in that process, the oxygen combines at a different rate and in this process , energy is released and the chemical reaction .creates different levels of power.This is not a subject that can be simplified, I hope this helps a little.

Answer 3

Fossil fuels have stored chemical energy, when ignited heat is released.

To understand how this does work. Think of what happens to a gas when you heat it? how does that effect the pressure? If a gas is expanding, what is it doing to the air around it?