One of the topics covered in GCSE Science is the chemistry of crude oils and of other fuels. This is the last of six quizzes on that particular subject and it focusses in particular on plastics - the polymers which are manufactured from crude oil.
Crude oil straight from the ground is not a particularly useful material but, after fractional distillation, it provides us with many different types of fuel. These fuels are all members of one large chemical family, the alkanes. But when some of the fractions of crude oil are 'cracked', a whole new world of chemistry opens up. The reason for this is that cracking produces a new family of chemicals, one which wasn't present in the oil to begin with. This new family of chemicals is the alkenes.