Understanding Coal Formation: From Plants to Fossil Fuel

🪨 How Was Coal Formed?


🌳 Coal comes from plants!

Coal was formed from plants that lived millions of years ago.

Long ago, Earth had:

  • Big forests 🌴🌿
  • Swampy lands
  • Warm and wet climate

🕰️ Step-by-step: How coal formed

1️⃣ Ancient plants grew

  • Huge trees and plants grew in swamps
  • They used sunlight to grow, just like plants today

2️⃣ Plants died and fell

  • When plants died, they fell into swamps
  • Water covered them
  • There was little air, so they did not rot completely

3️⃣ Plants got buried

  • Over time, mud and sand covered the dead plants
  • More and more layers piled on top

4️⃣ Heat and pressure worked

  • Deep underground:
    • Heat from Earth
    • Pressure from heavy layers above
  • Slowly changed the plant remains

⏳ This took millions of years!


5️⃣ Coal was formed

  • The plant matter slowly turned into coal
  • Coal stores energy from ancient sunlight

🧠 Easy to remember

Plants → buried → heat + pressure → coal


🔥 Why do we use coal?

  • Coal is used to:
    • Make electricity ⚡
    • Run factories 🏭

But burning coal causes pollution, so we now use clean energy too.


⭐ Fun facts for kids

  • Coal is called a fossil fuel
  • It is black and hard
  • It took millions of years to form, but we can burn it quickly

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