What If Helium Replaced Oxygen for 1 Minute?

Great birthday party! Bunch of kids running around, the same 5 songs on repeat. You stroll off on your own, check out the gifts table and stuff some of those chocolate cookies into your pocket for later.

You stumble on some nice balloons floating around. And because you have no self-control, you grab one and start inhaling that Helium. Everyone else is outside playing games, pinning the tail on the donkey.

And...it’s awesome! The first thing you notice is your voice changing. We’ve all done it at least once in our lifetime. Your voice gets super high-pitched and squeaky for a couple of seconds, you gotta keep inhaling through the balloon though, it doesn’t last very long.

It’s a fun party trick, and it’s all thanks to Helium, which is much lighter than Oxygen [He O]. Because of that, Helium travels quicker through your vocal cords, making them vibrate faster. The faster they vibrate, the more you sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

You lie back in a comfy chair, aahh. Suddenly you notice that everyone has that high-pitched voice too! The kids, the birthday boy, even the adults. Everyone’s freaking out. You breathe in, something’s up with the air. It feels different. It feels like the inside of the balloon you were just playing with!

A little bit of Helium isn’t harmful, not when you’re inhaling it through a balloon with almost no pressure. But a whole atmosphere of helium!?

Your ears start to feel a bit funny, and it sounds like someone’s revving a motorbike inside your head. You need Oxygen to balance out the air pressure inside your ear. And since the atmosphere is now filled with Helium for some reason, your body can’t maintain that balance. Without that constant level, it feels like you’re springing from sea level up to the summit of Everest and back!

Everyone starts running around, shouting in high squeaky voices. It’s pretty entertaining, but also kind of terrifying. You look up in the sky and see a drastic change. You check your watch and it’s still noon. But the sky is as dark as the night. You can still hear people squeaking, but now you can’t see them.

When the sun’s rays travel to Earth, they get reflected and bounce off different particles in the air, especially Oxygen. With Helium instead of Oxygen, you see much less blue, and a whole lot more black. The sun. It suddenly just looks like a small dot in the sky.

And as soon as the sun disappears, it gets hotter. Wasn’t expecting that. You feel like you just stepped in a sauna, you’re sweating all over. Just out of instinct, you dive under a tree. The sun feels really strong now. Oxygen in the ozone layer usually blocks and deflects a lot of ultraviolet rays, those are the ones that give you a sweet summer tan. With the oxygen gone, those rays are bearing down on Earth, It’s like you’re a pizza about to get cooked!

You try your best to calm down, but things are getting a bit out of control. And it’s a good thing you went outside just now because that house you were just in...it’s starting to look kind of flimsy. Concrete needs Oxygen to stay bound together. Without it, you’re just looking at a pile of cement, sand and water. Helium just doesn’t cut it.

You stand up and look over at the abandoned water tower. It’s crumbling! You run off in the darkness trying to make sense of everything. But everyone on the street is as confused as you are.

The whole block looks like a total mess. A lot of people abandoned their cars to seek shelter, and there are turned-over bikes and random bags everywhere. People just left everything and ran.

You find a car that doesn’t seem too damaged and switch on the ignition. Nothing. No sound or anything. You try another car, the same thing happens. And another. What?

You need oxygen to start a fire, which is basically what happens when you start your car. And since Helium isn’t combustible, the cars just won’t start. The same goes for starting a plane engine, or a motorbike. The whole world’s transportation system is suddenly useless! But there’s always muscle power. What about that bicycle? Aha!

Now you can escape this nightmare. You find a good one and pick it up. As you peddle along in the dark, you can almost hear the ground sizzling. You need to find help. You take your eyes off the road just for a moment, lose your balance and bump into a mailbox. You’re fine, you just brush yourself off and get back to peddling. But your bike and the mailbox are now sort of...glued together? This is getting way too sci-fi.

Get this: Solid metals can’t stick to each other, because of the Oxygen in the air. They need to be melted down and then mixed together. But, no oxygen, no problem. Metals are sticking together all over the place! You put your watch near the mailbox. Shoom! That was a mistake. You’ve got no choice: unbuckle it and leave it behind.

All that Helium is making you kind of dizzy.

Just then, you feel the ground shake. Things are gonna get worse? Come on! You ignore it and continue running, but it happens again, stronger this time! You look behind you and see the ground opening up.

That’s definitely your queue to... RUN! You dodge everything in your path. You’re Usain Bolt. You’re a cheetah. All this is definitely your fault somehow, you just know it. Why did you have to inhale that Helium balloon!

So basically, the Earth’s crust needs oxygen to maintain its form. Yeah... as if things couldn’t get any worse. But facts are facts. And the fact is, the Earth’s crust is made of almost 50% oxygen. We’re walking on air, people, literally. The ground’s collapsing in front of you, the sky’s gone black and...how are you even breathing right now, there’s no oxygen!

Zoing! Out of nowhere appears a flying, electric, plastic spaceship...just go with me on this one. Remember when I said that everything that runs on fuel needs Oxygen? Well, owning an electric vehicle’s looking pretty good right about now. Plus it’s plastic, so it won’t go around sticking to mailboxes and stuff.

You hop in, and your ears immediately feel more relaxed than before. There’s something in the air in here... Oxygen! Wow, did you hold your breath that whole time? The spaceship takes off and flies straight up, past the clouds, you’re as high as an airplane! Then the spaceship slows, and the engine turns off. There’s a brief moment where you feel like time just stops. Then you start slowly falling back to Earth. Uh-oh.

You start gaining speed faster and faster. Rollercoaster speed, race-car speed, sonic-jet speed! Your body shakes as you wake up from your nap. You open your eyes and look around. Everyone’s staring at you, apparently you just inhaled half the balloons at the party. They say you were yelling something...about a mailbox?

So helium makes you sound wacky when you inhale it, but what about liquid Helium? You can’t use it to make ice-cream or anything, but it does have a real purpose. Helium is used for cooling large machines that get hot when they’re turned on. Liquid helium is the coldest liquid in the world, colder than liquid Nitrogen!

You’re probably going to think twice about going at those Helium balloons again, but that’s actually not the only gas that’ll make your voice funny. Sulfur Hexafluoride. Helium’s way lighter than air, but Sulfur Hexafluoride is way heavier.

Which means that if you breathe in a little, your voice will go down real low, and you’ll have a loud, deep voice for a few seconds. You can also use it to make a sweet TikTok magic video.

Step 1: grab a container and fill it halfway with Sulfur Hexafluoride. It’s heavier than air, so you can leave the top off.

Step 2: try putting a paper boat into the container. It’ll be like it’s floating on thin air. No smoke, no mirrors. You can float anything on it, as long as it’s light enough: one of those folded paper birds, a flower petal...