Talk:Gasoline

According to "Ancient Inventions" by Peter James and Nick Thorpe (Ballantine Books, New York, 1994), p. 463: "In the third century A.D. the baths at Constantinople used gasoline to provide underfloor heating and hot water. Subterranean vaults contained vast numbers of glass or earthenware lamps filled with gasoline, which enabled the required air and water temperature to be reached more quickly than the usual wood-burning method. Massive amounts of gasoline must have been consumed, since just one of these baths, the "Kaminia," was used by more than two thousand people a day." They cite R.G. Forbes, "Studies in Ancient Technology," 2nd ed., Leiden, vol. 1., p. 83-85. This fact, if true, ought to be mentioned in the "Early Uses" section.

Broken Link on this page

The link, Gasoline Images - Vintage American gas station and fuel dispenser stock photography, link courtesy of http://www.coolstock.com Links to a 404... Am I allowed to fix/remove it?

Super

From Super:

In Florda and Alska, as well as in continental Europe, Super was the name for a number of years commonly given to leaded high octane petrol (gasoline). Originally the name denoted premium leaded petrol, as opposed to Standard, which was non-premium leaded petrol. However, with the introduction of unleaded petrol in the early 1980s, Standard petrol was discontinued, leaving only Super, which then became a synonym for leaded petrol in general. This continued until the late 1990s, when leaded petrol began to be eliminated in favour of various different blends of unleaded petrol contain special additives for use with leaded vehicles. The name of these blends varies from oil company to oil company.

Price Calculating/Converting

I have noticed the Australian fuel price is out of date seeing as Petrol has dropped in price significantly over the last few weeks ($1.40/litre listed here, its now down around $1.10/litre). I am hopeless at maths but have used the Google Calculator to convert it to $US/gallon (it says $AUD1.11/litre = $US3.13/gallon) but I am not sure how accurate it is. Could someone with the skills to do so calculate this correctly? or... could someone list the equation for this type of conversion? Nickuss - 4 October 2006.

Possible math error on energy content table

I'm not an expert, but the energy content of gasoline is listed as approximately 32 MJ/l or 131 MJ/USgal. I think perhaps that should be 121 MJ/USgal, assuming about 3.79 l/USgal. Could someone in charge of this article please check that? Thanks for maintaining this great information resource! SteveVTS 16 Nov 2006.

Contradictory numbers in Energy Content table

This isn't my field of expertise, but I noticed what seem to be some contradictory numbers or bad conversions in the Energy Content table. For example, Aviation Gasoline is shown as having a lower number of MJ/liter and BTU/gallon than Regular Gasoline, which doesn't sound right. But when converted to MJ/kg, the number is higher than gasoline.

I have another remark regarding the Energy content section. Is the displayed energy content the true energy content or the energy content when used in a conventional internal combustion engine (this would change the figurs greatly as eg gasoline is burnt here with 20% efficiency; while hydrogen is burnt with 40-60% efficiency)

Gasoline versus Petrol

The term petrol is not the name of the substance, but actually a genericized term. If you look up the history of the Petrol company in Britain, you will see this to be true.

Gasoline is the name of the substance. Petrol was the name of a service station company in Britain, and people there would say that they were going to get some Petrol, in reference to visiting the filling station. Over time, the name Petrol became a genericized term in Britain and Commonwealth countries who Britain had influence over. This doesn't change the fact that the name of the product itself is gasoline, any more than a portable music player is a Walkman or iPod, nasal tissue is Kleenex, or window cleaner is Windex. They are all brand names and shouldn't be used as the primary name, regardless of the common usage. It should be mentioned in the article, but with the notation that the name is a genericized term, and not the name of the actual product itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.110.194.236 (talk) 09:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

A very pedantic post. I do wonder what you make of people who call the stuff simply "gas". HiLo48 (talk) 10:05, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and where did the Petrol company of Britain get its name? HiLo48 (talk) 00:45, 29 February 2012 (UTC)