1119: Helium Doesn't Change a Voice's Pitch Jan 1, 2018

New Years' Eve, yesterday, was a day of partying for many, and maybe involved helium balloons. If you have happened to inhale helium—and likely even if you haven't—you may think that it makes the pitch of one's voice higher, but this isn't exactly true. The pitch of one's voice itself is not greatly affected by air-quality, so long as there is air at all. If that were the case, not only would this make it hard to comprehend two people with a relatively high and relatively low voice respectively in the same room, for instance, but also keep in mind that people can control the frequency of the movement of their vocal cords in order to alter the pitch of their voices, as is typical especially when singing. Your ears do not deceive you too much though, as what helium does do is to make the air travel faster, and the frequency of the airwaves passing through the larynx does change. This is also why records that are sped up can make whatever is being played back have a higher pitch than otherwise, or why slowed voices are lower.
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