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Why can you smell gasoline a block away from a gas station?

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Donaldson Tan:
1. pure gasoline is odourless. certain pungent additives are added to give gasoline that characterisitc smell, so that we can detect its presence with our nose easily.

3. attached is a diagram of a mercury barometer from http://erkki.kennesaw.edu/GCII1/gc00002.htm
The higher the pressure acting on the mercury, the higher will be the column. At high altitudes (such as mountain top), the atmospheric pressure is much lower than that at sea level, thus the mercury column would be shorter.

4. There are 2 factors that can account for the size of balloon, excluding leakage. The temperature and the external pressure (aka atmospheric pressure) acting on the balloon.  That u can decipher on your own already.

hmx9123:
"pure gasoline is odourless. certain pungent additives are added to give gasoline that characterisitc smell, so that we can detect its presence with our nose easily."

I think that you're thinking of methane, a.k.a., natural gas.  Gasoline (the stuff that goes in cars) has it's own odor--due to a lot of different chemicals going into it--like benzene, for instance.  Gasoline is a pretty wide mix of chemicals, and even pure octane smells like something.  However, natural gas does not.  Methyl mercaptain is added to it (IIRC) to give it the characteristic odor.

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