Why doesn't helium have any effect on the sound of my voice? (2024)

How did you find PF?: By searching for a answer to my question and everyone only knows how helium effects the sound of their voice not mine.No one has a a answer to the question why doesn't helium have any effect on the sound of my voice?

My question that no one has a answer to and ignores the question why does helium have no effect on the sound of my voice?

Have you recorded your voice while doing the helium inhalation experiment? or are you merely listening to it as you speak?

https://www.livescience.com/34163-helium-voice-squeaky.html

The live science article explains the helium effect and the fact that sound travels through helium faster than through air which explains the timbre change.

speculation alert:

Perhaps you are hearing the sound of your voice more through vibrations in your body going to the ear rather than it coming out of your mouth and then being picked up by your ears externally. This is similar to bone conduction headphone technology where the sound is being transmitted through your body to your ears.

jedishrfu said:

Have you recorded your voice while doing the helium inhalation experiment? or are you merely listening to it as you speak?

I have similar questions as @jedishrfu. Can you describe better how you did the experiment? Better still, can you post a video of you doing the experiment?

Vincentjacobprice said:

How did you find PF?: By searching for a answer to my question and everyone only knows how helium effects the sound of their voice not mine.No one has a a answer to the question why doesn't helium have any effect on the sound of my voice?

My question that no one has a answer to and ignores the question why does helium have no effect on the sound of my voice?

First, DO NOT inhale non-medical grade helium. For example, the helium used to fill helium balloons. Industrial grade helium has impurities, frequently various sulfuric gasses, that are rather toxic and even if they do not produce a toxic response for the rest of your body they can produce irritation and fluid accumulation in your lung tissues where the dose is highest.

That said, if you do acquire some medical grade helium and inhale a good lungful of helium then it will raise the pitch of your voice. If you tried this and there was no change in the pitch of your voice then you did not get a good lung full of helium but still had mostly air in your lungs.

Again, do not deliberately inhale industrial grade helium!

Dale said:

Again, do not deliberately inhale industrial grade helium!

Wow I had no idea. Thanks for educating us @Dale

anorlunda said:

Wow I had no idea. Thanks for educating us @Dale

In a previous role we did some imaging studies of lung gasses. We used medical grade perfluorinated gasses which are denser than air and have the opposite effect on your voice. That is when I learned about the different grades of gasses, and why medical grade costs so much more (they are painstakingly refined to not have impurities).

One other thing is that to get a real lung full of gas requires several full breaths in and out. No matter how much you breathe out there is still a rather large residual volume of gas in your lungs. That residual gas (air) will mix with any new gas that you are breathing in (helium) by diffusion. So to get a really high concentration of the new gas takes several breaths, each one further diluting the residual gas. And that is assuming that you really are inhaling only the new gas, which we did using a scuba-like apparatus with a well fitting mouth piece.

Dale said:

That is when I learned about the different grades of gasses, and why medical grade costs so much more (they are painstakingly refined to not have impurities).

I wonder what the application is to create a market for medical grade helium?

anorlunda said:

I wonder what the application is to create a market for medical grade helium?

This stuff is really expensive because it is not just medical grade helium, but it is medical grade helium-3. But here is a review article on the topic. It is basically used because it is a gas that can be imaged using commercially available MRI systems. Usually MRI images soft tissue and gas usually is invisible. But helium-3 gas can be made visible using these techniques.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3058806/

Dale said:

If you tried this and there was no change in the pitch of your voice then you did not get a good lung full of helium but still had mostly air in your lungs.

This.

I just played with a helium balloon last week and, if I didn't get a good lungful of it, it was hard to notice a change. But with a good lungful I could.

Something I was wondering about while doing this. If you overdo it, is it possible to pass out, or invite some other trouble from displacing the breathable air in your lungs for too long?

Those shuttle technicians inhaled pure nitrogen and died quickly. I sort of assumed it was more about starving their body of oxygen than anything toxic about nitrogen itself.

DaveC426913 said:

Something I was wondering about while doing this. If you overdo it, is it possible to pass out, or invite some other trouble from displacing the breathable air in your lungs for too long?

Those shuttle technicians inhaled pure nitrogen and died quickly. I sort of assumed it was more about starving their body of oxygen than anything toxic about nitrogen itself.

I share the concern. I know that the "I need to breathe now!" reflex is primarily triggered based on high CO2 concentration rather than on low O2 concentration. Stories about hypoxia suggest that the failure mode is happy stupidity followed by unconsciousness.

Huffing helium without a buddy or a way to let go of the danged helium source (and to assist with recovery breathing if needed) sounds like a poor plan.

DaveC426913 said:

If you overdo it, is it possible to pass out, or invite some other trouble from displacing the breathable air in your lungs for too long?

Those shuttle technicians inhaled pure nitrogen and died quickly. I sort of assumed it was more about starving their body of oxygen than anything toxic about nitrogen itself.

Yes, you are correct. Asphyxiation is a risk here. Helium is inert, so it is non-toxic, but it displaces oxygen so it is an asphyxiation hazard.

The perfluorinated gasses we were using came pre-mixed with 20% oxygen and 80% perfluorinated gas. So we didn't have any asphyxiation risk and (compared to He-3) it is a relatively cheap gas so we could waste several lung volumes to get all of the original air out.

With the helium studies in the link above you never do that so asphyxiation is just a theoretical risk. You always just do one single breath in, hold the breath for imaging, and then resume breathing normal free air.

kuruman said:

My research was mostly at liquid helium temperatures so I always had a cylinder of the research-grade helium gas needed to pressurize the liquid helium storage container for transfers. I put the end of the tygon tubing from the gas regulator into my mouth. Two or three breaths of the gently flowing gas were sufficient to make me sound like Donald Duck.

I don't know where research grade falls on the medical-industrial grade scale.

kuruman said:

My research was mostly at liquid helium temperatures so I always had a cylinder of the research-grade helium gas needed to pressurize the liquid helium storage container for transfers. I put the end of the tygon tubing from the gas regulator into my mouth. Two or three breaths of the gently flowing gas were sufficient to make me sound like Donald Duck.

So this raises another potential concern: what is the pressure in those tanks? Is it possible a slip of the thumb could release high pressure gas and damage your lungs (like a pneumothorax or rupturing alveoli)? You did say 'regulator' so that's good, but is it fool proof?

DaveC426913 said:

So this raises another potential concern: what is the pressure in those tanks? Is it possible a slip of the thumb could release high pressure gas and damage your lungs (like a pneumothorax or rupturing alveoli)? You did say 'regulator' so that's good, but is it fool proof?

Nothing is foolproof because there is always a fool to prove that nothing is foolproof. The regulator that I used was similar to the one shown below

There are three valves, right to left
1. The valve on top of the tank which comes with the tank. The regulator is attached to it. I opened that first. The pressure gauge to the left of the valve gave me the gas pressure in the tank, typically 3,000 psi for a full tank.
2. The control needle valve (round knob in front of the gauges). I opened that and read the delivery pressure on the left gauge which was low enough to barely move the gauge needle.
3. The "T" valve to the tubing provided additional tweaking of the pressure.

The low delivery pressure gave me a gentle helium breeze. To shut down, I first closed the tank valve and bled out the residual gas. Then closed the other two valves. No pneumothorax, no ruptured alveoli, no slip of the thumb, no problems.

kuruman said:

Nothing is foolproof because there is always a fool to prove that nothing is foolproof.

OK, so it is quite dangerous if not handled carefully and correctly. There are straightforward paths to injury.

(Contrast with: I use regs for diving, but there is no way to mishandle the regulator in a way that could injure me without a fair amount of concerted jerry-rigged shenaniganing.)

hutchphd said:

The discomfort is not caused by anoxia but rather the buildup of CO₂. It is why re breathers for scuba can be so tricky to make fail-safe.

You sent me scrambling for a dictionary, because I thought the term was hypoxia. I found this on Wikipedia.

Hypoxia differs from hypoxemia and anoxemia in that hypoxia refers to a state in which oxygen supply is insufficient, whereas hypoxemia and anoxemia refer specifically to states that have low or zero arterial oxygen supply. Hypoxia in which there is complete deprivation of oxygen supply is referred to as anoxia.

I learn something every day on PF.

JT Smith said:

I kind of wondered if maybe inhaling a lot of balloon grade helium might not be the best idea.

You were probably starting some mild toxicity from whatever impurities happened to be in that batch of helium.

hutchphd said:

passing out cold (and et seq.).

Sadly, there is very little "et seq." left at that point.

Vanadium 50 said:

Sadly, there is very little "et seq." left at that point.

Only the "remains."

Your lungs on baloon grade helium:

[Image redacted by the Mentors because it's too gross]

"[Image redacted by the Mentors because it's too gross]"

WHAT? You are against education?

A mentor may share with a mentee (or protege) information about his or her own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling.

Above from What is the role of a mentor? https://www.washington.edu/doit/what-role-mentor

anorlunda said:

View attachment 313543

But is it suitable for evening wear?