Combined ScienceCode 5129
Aerobic and anaerobic respiration
What this topic asks you to be able to do
- Describe aerobic respiration as the process that releases a comparatively large quantity of energy through the breakdown of glucose where oxygen is present
- Give the word equation and the balanced chemical equation that represent aerobic respiration
- State that respiration produces carbon dioxide as a waste product, and that humans excrete it through their lungs
- Describe anaerobic respiration as the process that releases a comparatively small quantity of energy when glucose is broken down without oxygen
- Give the word equation that represents anaerobic respiration within human bodies
- Account for why lactic acid accumulates in muscles and blood during intense exercise, producing an ‘oxygen debt’
- Outline how the oxygen debt is cleared once exercise has finished, limited to: (a) a heart that keeps beating quickly so that lactic acid in the blood travels from the muscles to the liver (b) breathing that stays deeper and faster to bring in the oxygen needed for breaking lactic acid down in the liver