Destructive distillation

Destructive distillation means breaking something down into smaller parts by heating it up very very hot. Think about cooking hot dogs on the grill! When you cook the hot dogs on the grill, they start to break down and get smaller as they get hotter and hotter. Destructive distillation is like that, only instead of hot dogs, we're heating up things like wood, coal, and oil.

When we heat these things up super hot, they break down into smaller parts called "byproducts". These byproducts can be things like gas, tar, and oil. We can collect these byproducts and use them to make other things like fuel to power cars and machines, or chemicals to make plastics and other useful materials.

So, destructive distillation is a process of heating things up to break them down into smaller parts that we can use to make other things. It's like grilling hot dogs, only with wood, coal, and oil instead!