Where Does Gasoline Come From?

This lesson, developed by Cathy Grimes, demonstrates the creation, extraction, and refinement of crude oil, allowing students to follow the process from their local gas station and into their parents' cars. Developed for students at the fifth-grade level, this lesson teaches students to reproduce and name (in order) the steps of the creation, extraction, and refinement of crude oil, and asks students to think about content vocabulary and how to calculate a car's miles per gallon use of gasoline. 

The lesson, divided into three parts, should take no more than three hours of class time (and thirty minutes of at-home time) to complete. Before starting the lesson, students should know that gasoline is needed to power their parents' cars, that most every car on the road is powered by gasoline, how to take notes in either words or drawings, and how to do basic computational math skills at the sixth grade (or below) level. 

Included with this lesson is a worksheet to be completed by the student at home.