Pull up to the pumps at a gas station and you’re usually faced with three options: regular, mid-grade and premium. The grades are often rationalized as "All right," "Why not do something special for my car?," and "Wow." Yet there is more to the choice than just good-better-best.
The staggered prices reflect the measure of octane in the fuel. Octane is a molecule of composed of hydrogen and carbon, a hydrocarbon. Octane raises a fuel's resistance to autoignition, so the more octane in a fuel, the more pressure the fuel can take before it spontaneously combusts. If the fuel doesn't autoignite, or explode before its meant to, then the spark plug can do its job, you get the full performance of the engine and everyone's happy. If the fuel does autoignite, bad things can happen to your engine -- but we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.
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