Long hydrocarbon are __________ useful than shorter ones like petrol. We can 'crack' these longer chains into shorter ones.
This process involves heating the hydrocarbons to vaporise them and passing the vapours over a hot catalyst. A catalyst is a chemical that speeds up a reaction without being used up or changed itself and allows the reaction to happen at a cooler temperature.
The actual cracking process is a thermal decomposition reaction in which a __________ molecule splits into __________ molecules, when __________. In the lab, cracking can be done using the following equipment:
Click here for full method
In this example the porcelain chips are the __________.
When we do this we end up with a mixture of both alkanes and alkenes (see What's in crdue oil? from C1a).
The alkanes are used as __________, while the alkenes can also be used to make __________ (plastics).