The lactic acid diffuses out of the muscles and is taken to the liver by the blood. The liver can change lactic acid back into glucose: however, this conversion also requires the use of ATP. During strenuous exercise, primarily the muscles and not the liver use the oxygen, so the lactic acid accumulates.
/quenchÂ·ing/ (kwenchÂ´ing) 1. suppressing or diminishing a physical property, as of heat in a metal by immersion in cold liquid. 2. decrease of fluorescence from an excited molecule by other molecules that absorb some emission energy that would otherwise occur as light.
Coke being pushed into a quenching car, Hanna furnaces of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Detroit, Michigan, November 1942. In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties. A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring.