Fractional distillation

Fractional distillation is like separating all the different colors in a big box of crayons. You know how there are lots of different colors like red, blue, green, and more? Well, sometimes we want to only have one color of crayon to use.

It's the same with liquids. Sometimes we have a big mix of liquids, and we want to separate them out so we can use just one of the liquids. But instead of using colors like crayons, we use boiling points.

Different liquids have different boiling points, which means they boil and turn into gas at different temperatures. Fractional distillation is a machine that heats up the mix of liquids until they start turning into gas. Then, the gases go through a special tube that is very long and skinny.

This special tube is called a column, and it has different sections that are hotter or cooler than other sections. When each gas goes through the column, it gets stuck in the section where it's the same temperature as the gas' boiling point.

So, the gas that has the lowest boiling point gets stuck at the top of the column, and the gas with the highest boiling point gets stuck at the bottom. This separates all the different gases into different parts of the column, like the different colors in our crayon box.

At the end of the column, we can collect each gas separately and use them for different things. And just like how we can use each color of crayon for different pictures, we can use each gas for different purposes like making fuel or making plastic.