I just realised that I have never seen or used it, neither crude oil of course, but there are more variants of it than this natural mineral that powers a lot of the world.
What led to you seeing or touching coal?
Sure! My stepfather was a coal miner and brought home several fossils in coal when I was a kid. Ferns, tree bark, etc. I’ve lost track of them over the years, unfortunately.
I’ve actually been in a coal mine too. In my hometown, they have a decommissioned mine where they give tours.
This mf never had a grill party.
Most people where I am use charcoal, not mineral coal.
good point lol. I’m a country away from the bags, so I won’t check.
This mf has no idea what coal is.
Went to a open cast lignite mining operation once. The scales are quite impressive. Once standing at the bottom of the pit vision of the surrounding landscape just fades and you feel a bit like in a wasteland of sorts.
I assume many people are familiar with hydrocarbon gas for cooking or heating. Coal can also be converted to liquid or gas fuel form chemically but the process is quite complex and usually not economical.
Then there’s crude oil. Never been near it but its ubiquitous in its refined forms, just go to a gas station.
EDIT: the coal typically used for barbecue (charcoal) is made from wood and is different from the stuff mined from the earth. Many people seem to not know this.
We bought a house with a small coal supply under the stairs. No idea what to do with it.
I dabble with blacksmithing. I’d take it in a heartbeat
We use coal for bbq here
I think you mean charcoal. Coal would probably make your food taste awful.
Yep yep yep thats my bad
In my language I don’t think there’s a distinction between the two, but you can say it’s barbecue coal etc.
There better be. Charcoal is semi-burnt wood. Coal is effectively ‘solid’ oil. Cooking with regular coal would be horrible.
We have like barbecue coal or bricettes, and coal ore as far as I know but I am no coal miner.
Either way it’s not like we get them confused because our language is a certain way.
In my language, the word for coal refers to both types, but you can specify “wood coal” or “rock coal” if necessary.
It makes sense. Coal in English is a word that originally meant a burning ember and likely related to charcoal that we then changed to exclusively mean rock coal. Since it didn’t happen until the 1300s and we were producing charcoal long before that.
If anything charcoal is redundant. It’s a word with an origin like “burned burned” (though char comes from change, not burn)
As a child, I used to live alongside a heritage steam railway in the south of England. Much of the engineering/restoration works was accessible, along with huge sections of the way. I’d quite often find lumps of Welsh Steam Coal that had fallen off the engines. It has a very peculiar and distinctive (yet strangely pleasant) smell in its unburnt form.
In the US I have had similar experiences walking along tracks, though the trains were just transporting the coal and they used diesel engines.
I don’t know whether it was you, but I have responded to this same question on Lemmy before.
Yes. We had a coal fire when I was growing up - in the 60s and 70s -, so it was an everyday thing during the winters.
From the former prime minister of Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkyuI3oiGNE
for those wondering: “this is coal”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea5bOaPkZpc
Use to have an open coal fire in my childhood home. Made many a coal fire. It’s very sooty on the hands!
It wasn’t charcoal? That sounds wretched. Would it not release toxins into the house?
Don’t think so! Defintely much heavier and more solid than bbq charcoal. I don’t remember it being very smoky, weird less so than wood fires (which have a distinctive and pleasant smell) or peat fires, which were also common in my region but would trigger my asthma. But possibly it was just that I was used to coal? Maybe someone else would have found it gross?
Edit: Doing a bit of research, it seems like historically home fires would use bituminous coal, but by the time I was a child it was anthracite coal that was used. Which only releases 20% of the smoke of bituminous coal. But it’s still a fossil fuel, and not charcoal.
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My neighbour used it for heating in winter when I was a kid.
I see a lot of “yes” here, so let me chime in with: no, I don’t think I ever have.
This question got me. I’m 53, too young to have seen it used for household heat or the like. Was a major rockhound as a child, knew all about rocks.
I roll my own lump charcoal for black powder. If you handed me a chunk of coal, I’d say, “Yep. That’s coal.”
I’ve… never seen coal.
Yeah, was walking over a bridge over some train tracks as a train was going by, had hopper cars full of coal.
Western PA, literally everything is near an abandoned coal mine. The woods near my house growing up had sink holes all over the place and coal just sitting on the sides of the hill where it had been dumped and abandoned.
We still use it to heat our tea.
Coal for heating at my grandma’s place yeah. In the southern US, you can also see trains filled with the stuff going west along I-40.
