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Inhaling Helium doesn’t make your voice higher in pitch, it just changes the timbre.

Timbre is defined as the quality given to a sound, which explains why playing the same note on a piano and a guitar will produce two different sounds, even though they are the same pitch. To get even more technical, pitch is determined by wavelength, and timbre is determined by frequency. Because helium is less dense than air, the helium particles vibrate faster (thereby increasing frequency), though the wavelength remains the same.

Protip: Inhaling Xenon (a gas significantly heavier than air) will produce a much deeper sounding timbre.

Edit: Reader BlueApple007 points out that frequency affects pitch, which is true if we’re talking about a single medium (in air, frequency and wavelength are always inversely related—when frequency increases, wavelength decreases and vice versa). When comparing two mediums though (air vs. Helium), the speed of sound changes, which causes a change in frequency only, similar to how light waves refract in water.

(Source: phys.unsw.edu.au)

  1. mthmtcs reblogged this from ohyeahfacts
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    play my smart arse repeating that… :P
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  4. -fractures reblogged this from ohyeahfacts and added:
    PHYSICS IS COOL.
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  20. downeylaurie reblogged this from ohyeahfacts and added:
    for future reference.
  21. silhouette0nthestreets reblogged this from ohyeahfacts and added:
    my inner speech pathology nerd...currently jumping up...down...
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  23. arghasfd reblogged this from ohyeahfacts and added:
    I wish I had read this before Renner asked
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  26. fishesarecool reblogged this from ohyeahfacts and added:
    LOOOOL ive never even tried it yet :(
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