EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -After millions of years underground, the compounds that make up plankton and plants turn into fossil fuels. Plankton decomposes into natural gas and oil, while plants become coal.

Detailed explanation-2: -For an organism to become a fossil, it must not decompose or be eaten. This can happen if the organism either lives within or is moved to a place where it can be buried and kept from decaying.

Detailed explanation-3: -Decomposers, such as bacteria and fungi, give off carbon to the atmosphere as CO2 or CH4 when they break down carbon from dead animals and plants into their different nutrients. Small amounts of fossil fuels (natural gas, crude oil, or coal) leak from underground to the surface.

Detailed explanation-4: -Rocks like limestone and fossil fuels like coal and oil are storage reservoirs that contain carbon from plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. When these organisms died, slow geologic processes trapped their carbon and transformed it into these natural resources.

Detailed explanation-5: -Fossil fuels are burned to produce energy. In large power stations they are burned in the presence of oxygen. As the fuel burns the heat energy is used to heat water, as it is heated it produces steam which in turn rises and drives a turbine.