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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuffworks dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question. Do

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Speaker 1: race cars use gasoline like normal cars do or do

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Speaker 1: they use something else? It depends on the type of

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Speaker 1: race car you're talking about. For example, NASCAR engines burn

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Speaker 1: a hundred and ten octane leaded gasoline, Indy cars burn

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Speaker 1: pure methanol also known as wood alcohol, top fuel, dragsters

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Speaker 1: and funny cars burn nitromethane. Each of these fuels has

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Speaker 1: advantages and disadvantages. For example, the methodol fuel used in

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Speaker 1: Indie cars has the advantage that it can run at

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Speaker 1: extremely high compression ratios, meaning more power and the engines

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Speaker 1: able to handle TERMO charging easily. Methodol also has a

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Speaker 1: nice safety feature. You could extinguish a methodol fire with water.

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Speaker 1: Hundred and ten octane gasoline also handles high compression well.

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Speaker 1: Nitro Methane is basically a liquid explosive and contains a

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Speaker 1: great deal of energy per unit volume. It has more

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Speaker 1: than twice the energy is a similar amount of gasoline.

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