(An optional classroom project requiring your teacher’s supervision.)

THINGS YOU NEED: Everything shown in the drawing.
 

     If you are given permission to try this experiment in the school chemistry lab, set up the equipment as shown in the drawing. Your teacher will guide you in the proper proce- dures.

     When all is ready, heat the coal in the test tube for several minutes to drive out the air. Afterward, bring a flame to the opening of the outlet tubing. The emerging gas will burn. This gas is known, not surprisingly, as coal gas. It consists of a number of burnable gases.

     Along with these fuel gases, the heating of coal in the absence of air produces coke (what remains in the horizontal tube), coal tar (what remains in the upright tube), and ammonia. All are highly useful by-products of this process, which is still in use today.