can gasoline be compressed Simple question, can gasoline be compressed? Is it compressible as in how water is incompressible. Would one be able to store x gallons of gasoline in a pressurized container that is x-y size. For example could you store 100 gallons of gasoline in a pressurized 98 gallon container?
 A: The resistance of a material to compression is given by its bulk modulus.
Suppose the initial volume of out object is $V$ (100 gallons in this case) and we compress it by a small amount $dV$ (2 gallons) then the pressure needed to do this is:
$$ P = K\frac{dV}{V} $$
where $K$ is the bulk modulus.
The bulk modulus of gasoline is $1.3 \times 10^9$ Pa, so in your example the pressure needed to compress the gasoline is:
$$ P \approx 1.3 \times 10^9 \frac{2}{100} \approx 2.6 \times 10^7 \,\text{Pa} $$
One atmosphere is 101325 Pa so the pressure is about 260 atmospheres, which actually isn't that much. Industrial processes routinely work at these sorts of pressures.
Note that I used the approximately equal sign, $\approx$, in my equation. The bulk modulus is usually a function of the amount of compression rather than a constant, so my first equation is true only for an infinitesimally small compression $dV$ rather than the 2% compression you give. However the bulk modulus probably doesn't change that much over a 2% compression and the pressure I've calculated will be a good approximation.
