If Helium Makes Your Voice Squeaky, Can Something Else Make It ...

The pitch of your voice is determined by the air you breathe. Helium makes your voice squeaky because it is a light gas. Sulphur Hexafluoride makes your voice deep because it is a heavy gas.

Every human has their own natural vocal range, and it’s hard to make your voice higher or lower without actually exercising your thorax. However, the quality of your sound isn’t a feature of your voice, but rather depends on the air you’re breathing.

The pitch of your voice would be different if you were breathing Martian air, or any other air composition, for that matter. Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 20% Oxygen and 79% Nitrogen; the remainder is made up of Argon, Hydrogen, Carbon Dioxide and other gases. This mixture gives your voice the sound that you think that you ‘have’. If you were to breathe pure oxygen, for example, your voice would be a little lower than normal. If you were to breathe pure carbon dioxide… you would probably die.

The most interesting thing about breathing weird gases is that they change your voice, but you can do absolutely nothing about it. Even trying to change it while the gas is in your lungs simply doesn’t work. The “gas user” has to wait for as long as it takes for that substance to move out of the lungs and clear the throat. There are two audio clips below that will make you realize how different your voice sounds when you inhale Helium and when you inhale Sodium Hexafluoride.

Breathing Helium (The Squeaky Voice Gas):

Helium is the second lightest gas on the periodic table, and non-lethal in small quantities. This makes it extremely useful when you want to freak out your friends by impersonating Alvin the Chipmunk. To make your day better, here’s Morgan Freeman after sucking up some Helium.

Breathing Sulphur Hexafluoride (The Deep Voice Gas):

Although there are many gases that make you sound like Morgan Freeman, Sulphur Hexafluoride is the best candidate if you want to avoid dying within seconds of inhaling it. To be more specific, it is one of the only non-poisonous gas heavy enough to make your voice lower than normal. Xenon, which is a noble gas, can also have the same effect on you but it is very rare and expensive. Other options would include Nitrous Oxide also known as laughing gas used by dentists during surgeries. It has the added benefit of ‘relaxing’ you, for lack of a better word, accompanied with visual distortions and euphoria. So, if you want to be able to remember your name while you try to lower your voice, sulphur hexafluoride is the way to go. Also, it makes you sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to impersonate Sylvester Stallone.

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