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Once the gas has been either collected from the ground or made from coal or cows it can be stored in a huge tank called a gas holder, which has a special sliding top which means it gets bigger when it is full of gas, and smaller when it is emptier. This stops gas from spreading all over the inside of the tank when it is almost empty, or getting dangerously squashed when it is full.
When the gas is ready to be delivered to our homes it is piped through large pipes buried under the streets. These are called gas mains, and you may have seen people working on them and sometimes even smelt the gas. Smaller pipes take the gas from the main pipe into our homes, schools offices and shops. These pipes usually go under the floors or behind cupboards and walls and deliver the gas to the boilers and cookers that need them.
The gas also passes through a special meter which measures how much gas has been used every day.
Once the gas has reached our cooker or boiler we can use a special switch to make sure that we only let the gas out when we need it, and that we only use exactly the amount we need for different jobs. For example, we only need a small amount of gas on a gentle flame for a short amount of time to make fried eggsbut we need a lot of gas on a very high flame for a long time to boil a whole chicken.
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