The density of helium is almost 7 times less than that of ordinary air. By inhaling this inert gas vocal cords, the frequency of their vibration increases, and the voice sounds in a raised tone. To some, the sounds made resemble the voice of a cartoon character, and to others, the squeak of a mouse or the speech of a baby. But, in any case, it becomes around.

But after inhaling sulfur fluoride - heavy gas, which is 5 times , even the girls start to speak in low bass.

Is inhaling helium safe?

In general, it is considered quite safe, since oxygen enters the human body along with the gas. In addition, it is difficult to recognize a person who has inhaled helium, except perhaps for the moment when he starts to say something.

And the gas itself cannot be determined - it has neither smell nor taste. However, helium can cause some side effects.

Some people may experience signs of oxygen deprivation, such as dizziness, headache, difficulty breathing, and nausea. The vocal cords, when helium is inhaled, vibrate at a higher frequency, which causes the desired effect, but as a result they can be damaged, and this process is considered irreversible.

Deep and frequent breaths of this inert gas can provoke the appearance of helium bubbles in the blood. Once they reach the brain, they can cause a stroke and even be fatal.

It may also be unsafe to simply oversaturate the lungs with helium, when the oxygen content in the human body is significantly reduced.

Here's another interesting fact: if a person is temporarily placed in a chamber that is filled only with helium, after a while he will suffocate. This is due to the fact that such a gas contains only a couple of tenths of a percent of oxygen.

In addition to this, we can add that pampering with helium is especially dangerous for pregnant women, and not only for the expectant mother, but also for her baby. Therefore, it is best to simply admire the light balls, without trying to inhale the gas contained in them.

If you decide to try the effect of "laughing gas" on yourself, do not inhale at a time a large number of helium. It’s better to take a few small breaths, and when the effect of the gas wears off, try again, just don’t overdo it, because health and life are the most important thing.

Helium is the second most abundant chemical element in the universe after hydrogen. However, among fans of "joking" this inert gas, of course, holds the palm. And no wonder: one puff of helium - and it's time for you to voice Donald Duck.

Helium belongs to the group of inert gases, which means it has a certain degree of narcotic effect. Did not know? It's OK! According to this indicator, helium is inferior to all other noble gases, so that a person who decides to inhale it will not experience addiction. But it is very possible to amuse the company with the help of this gas.

Everyone is wondering why the voice changes from helium. It's simple: when ingested, the gas acts on the vocal cords, causing them to contract. The result is a thin "mouse" voice. And to be precise, it's all about the nature and properties of the voice.

Helium is by far the world's most "fun" inert gas

The human voice is sound waves created by the vibration of the vocal cords. Helium is denser than the air we normally breathe. The timbre of the voice directly depends on this very density, and the vibration frequency of the ligaments determines the pitch of the sound emitted. Now it’s clear why the voice changes from helium?

A balloon, a voice... what do they have in common?

History has not preserved the name of the first person who inhaled helium and spoke in a funny voice. But his faithful followers do not let the tradition fade away and continue to amuse everyone around. All you need is a balloon, a voice and a little imagination.

A helium balloon will brighten up even the most boring party.

Entertainment is safe enough, if not abused. Helium is an inert gas, odorless and tasteless. Therefore, a person who has inhaled helium can only be recognized by his voice. And that's why helium changes its voice at the moment of "recognition" no one will think - this idea is too hilarious!

Who among us has not tried to inhale the contents of helium balloons and then talk in a funny cartoon voice? Many are even sure that they understand why the voice is so...

Who among us has not tried to inhale the contents of helium balloons and then talk in a funny cartoon voice? Many are even sure that they understand why the voice changes so dramatically.

Here are the most common versions:

• Helium is less dense, so it makes the vocal cords vibrate more. Hence the higher squeaky voice.
• Helium is lighter than air and escapes faster. The speed of the movement of sound changes the voice.
• Helium changes the structure of the vocal cords, which entails a change in voice.

If you don't want to sound stupid, don't say that.

What is really going on?

These indicators are related by the formula:

Wave propagation speed = wave frequency * wavelength

It is the frequency sound wave affects the characteristics of the voice, its personality.

Part voice apparatus includes the oral and nasal cavities, pharynx, larynx, lungs and trachea. The vocal cords are located in the larynx. The vocal cords are folds in the mucous membrane of the larynx. They really fluctuate under the pressure of the air exhaled from the lungs. A sound wave is formed, that is, sound. But! It's not a voice. We don't even hear this sound.

What do we hear? Due to the vibration of the vocal cords, the air in the lungs and larynx also begins to vibrate. There is a resonance. This is a sharp increase in the amplitude of the oscillations of a sound wave. It is the resonance that makes the sound louder. These amplified sound waves we hear and call voice. Resonance occurs at different people at different frequencies with a specific wavelength of sound. Usually at four or five frequencies. Therefore, each person has a different voice. This is called the timbre of the voice. It is the timbre of the voice that changes when we inhale helium.

Why does the timbre of the voice change?

So, we inhale helium. What changed? The environment has changed. Helium is indeed less dense than air. The speed of a sound wave increases in a less dense medium, but its length remains the same (after all, the size of the mouth, pharynx, larynx did not change). What indicator is changing? Let's look at the formula. Correctly! Frequency. Resonance now occurs at higher frequencies of the sound wave. And we hear a different timbre of voice. Squeaky and funny.

Surely you will have fun with your friends more than once, speaking in the voice of a cartoon character. The effect of helium is so amazing that even an adult is hard to resist the temptation to inhale the contents of the balloon. Try to surprise your friends next time with an understanding of the nature of this phenomenon. No one doubts that laughter prolongs life, but only knowledge fills it with meaning.

Helium: changing a person's voice from helium?

Many in childhood did a “trick” with a gel ball, becoming a cartoon character for a while. So why does helium change the voice, and how long can we maintain such an effect?

No one can say the name of the first person who dared to inhale foreign gas and experience changes in vocal cords. However, many follow the path of "pioneers" and at parties show the skill of conversation in a sweet voice. There is on the Internet great amount videos that allow you to extend the effect of helium by 10-20 seconds. The average duration of the action of gas with one breath is 30 seconds, which is quite enough for telling a little joke or staging a parody.

Each of us asked ourselves questions about why the voice changes from helium, and on what factors it depends. First, helium belongs to the group of inert gases, whose density is higher than the density of the air that we all breathe. Secondly, when a certain amount of helium is inhaled, an active effect on the vocal cords begins: air masses "compress" them, and as a result, the interlocutor's speech changes to a child's.

So, the human timbre depends on many factors. However, an important role is played by the density of the air that a person inhales. If this indicator of inhaled content is less than a certain mark, then drastic changes may not be seen in speech.

Thus, one can conclude the fact that the voice due to the inhalation of helium is changed solely due to the density of the foreign gas. Using this fact, a person can independently control the time of "mouse" speech.

Why else could the sonorous voice of the interlocutor familiar to everyone change? Similarly, the timbre would change not only under helium, but also under the influence of other air masses, whose density would be higher than the density of air familiar to us. One can imagine how a person could speak on the Sun or on the Moon if he inhaled the local air.

Note: Helium is one of the addictive gases. But in small doses, it does not pose any danger to humans. However, you should not abuse the inhalation of this element, as this can adversely affect your well-being.

Launches the Question to the Scientist project, in which experts will answer interesting, naive or practical questions. In the new issue, Candidate of Chemical Sciences Pyotr Obraztsov explains the cause of voice distortion when inhaling helium.

Why does helium distort the voice?

Pyotr Alekseevich Obraztsov

Candidate of Chemical Sciences, scientific columnist for Russian Journal and Science and Life journal

Helium gas, first discovered on the Sun and named after our star named Helios, is used to fill balloons, to replace nitrogen in pressure chambers and scuba tanks, to create superconductivity, etc. In the first case, the inertness of helium and its low density are used , in the second case, helium does not create a state of intoxication among divers at depths of tens of meters, like ordinary nitrogen. In addition, at high pressures, nitrogen dissolves in the diver's blood, and during a rapid ascent from a depth, it is released from the blood in the form of bubbles that clog the vessels. There is a so-called caisson disease. And helium doesn't behave like that.

The most important properties of helium - low density and viscosity - are the reasons for such a funny feature of this gas as an increase in voice tone. And in a low-density gaseous medium, consisting of oxygen and helium instead of nitrogen, the speed of sound is much greater than in ordinary air. And the volume of the oral cavity and the upper part of the throat (resonator) remains unchanged. As a result, both the frequency of the ligaments and the frequency of the sound propagating in this resonator increase, which means the appearance of a sort of squeaky sound.

The reverse effect of lowering the frequency is possible when inhaling mixtures with inert gases heavier than nitrogen, for example, inert krypton or xenon. Breathing such a mixture, an ordinary extras of the opera would have eclipsed Chaliapin himself with his bass.

However, if anyone reading these lines wants to reproduce this effect (helium available, they inflate balloons), he must remember that with prolonged inhalation of helium-containing mixtures, oxygen starvation and loss of consciousness. You need to immediately catch your breath in the fresh air.

Probably each of us knows that if you inhale a little gas from a helium balloon, then the voice will become thinner and will sound funny. But not everyone will be able to answer why the voice changes from helium when the gas is inhaled ?! And all because helium has a much lower density. The vocal cords vibrate elastically in the air stream. And since the density of helium is seven times lower than air, it means that it loads the ligaments much less, which is why they vibrate with a higher frequency and the voice becomes squeaky and funny.
Now let's take a closer look at how and why helium changes the voice. The mechanics of the human voice is an amazing biological phenomenon. It all starts with the fact that the air through the larynx enters the lungs and then in the form carbon dioxide leaves the lungs again through the larynx. This can be manipulated in several ways. For example, you can release the air, and all that is heard by others is the sound of breathing. If you need to say something, the muscles of the larynx and vocal cords are included in the matter.

The air in your lungs pushes your diaphragm to relax. It then travels through your windpipe and into a small opening that has two folds of skin (vocal cords) on either side of it, in the shape of a V. As the muscles that control your voice tense and relax, they create the vibration of the cords. When these cords vibrate, they release pulses of air. Tension in these muscles creates differences in frequency. The higher the voltage, the higher the frequency and therefore the higher the voice. This frequency is measured in hertz (well, that is, how many times per second it repeats). For example, almost all human speech sounds usually range from 200 hertz to 8000 hertz.

After exiting the vocal window, the air moves into an area of ​​your mouth that can be informally called your vocal tract. As you manipulate your tongue, jaw, and lips, you can change the resonant frequencies created by your vocal connections, reproducing many different sounds speech.
The sound created by air flowing at different frequencies and resonances creates our voice. Another factor affecting stride is the thickness of the vocal cords. The thicker the folds of the skin, the deeper the voice, and vice versa - the thinner the folds and the thinner the voice.

So now let's talk about the air that comes out of your lungs. The number of molecules in a fixed volume of gas, like the volume of air in the lungs, does not change with the type of gas (assuming the pressure is low enough). As long as the temperature and pressure are the same, it doesn't matter if it's helium or air, the number of molecules is the same. The mass of these molecules is then measured by atomic weight. Atomic weight - dimensionless physical quantity(which is why it works so well for a gas that doesn't necessarily have a given size). This is the ratio of the average mass of an element's atoms compared to 1/12 of the mass of a carbon-12 atom. All this basically means is that the higher the number, the heavier the gas.
Helium has atomic weight 4.002602. Air, which is approximately 80% nitrogen, has different characteristics depending on environment. Because of this, its actual atomic weight cannot be accurately determined. However, it is typically about seven times heavier than helium.

So, why does the voice change from helium when the gas is inhaled?! The answer lies in how sound waves travel through a given gas. The denser or heavier the gas, the slower the sound wave will be. Helium is much lighter than air. Then the speed of the sound wave through helium will be much higher. So when you inhale helium and use it as a source of perceived sound, you simply increase the speed or frequency of your voice. You don't change the pitch, as your vocal cords vibrate at the same rate as when you use air. You also do not change the configuration of your vocal tract. So while the fundamental frequency of the chords remains the same, the frequency of the sound heard by others increases due to the wave traveling through helium much faster than through air.