What is actually happening in your body when you breathe in helium that changes your voice?
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Fun fact, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is like an anti-helium. It is denser than air, and inhaling it will cause your voice to get super deep.
There’s a clip of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where they bring on a science guy to demonstrate it. Josh Duhamel was the guest that night. Both Jay and Josh got a big whiff of it and were messing around sounding pretty monstrous.
Thing is, this gas is completely inert, colorless, odorless. Except if you pass voltage through it. Earlier in the set before people were breathing it in, the science guy extinguished a stun gun in it – in most of industry, this is exactly what this gas is used for, as a dielectric material. But, it’s used pressurized to raise its properties.
If you manage to get an arc to pass through SF6, it creates all sorts of hazardous gasses, like mustard gas and airborne acids. In a vat, unpressurized, this could have happened as the stun gun was dipped into and out of the vat (and it was thinned in the swirl of air + SF6 above the tank).
It’s also a greenhouse gas and heavier than air, which means if there’s a leak of a large quantity of it, it can settle in a valley or someone’s basement, and you suffocate in it. It also doesn’t clear itself from your lungs like helium (because it’s heavier, not lighter, than air). You have to take superbreaths in order to flush it out.
I don’t know if the science guy ever appeared on the show after that. He was a sometimes guest for a few shows.
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