the.com/quenching
violently freezing metal's chaos mid-tantrum so it hardens before it can change its mind
means Rapidly cooling something hot — most often heated metal plunged into water or oil — to lock in a desired hardness or structure, or more loosely, satisfying a thirst.
from From Old English 'cwencan,' to extinguish or put out (as a fire or a flame), itself related to 'acwencan' with the same sense. The 'thirst' meaning grew naturally from putting out a fire — you douse a flame, you douse a craving for water. The metalworker's sense is younger still, borrowing the same image: the glowing steel hisses into the bath like a quenched torch.
the speedsteel cools thousands of degrees per second
trapped chaoslocks atoms in a frozen, stressed arrangement called martensite
medium matterswater, oil, brine, even molten salt all quench differently
the risktoo fast and the part cracks itself apart
thirst originsame word once meant extinguishing fire and slaking thirst