NOS and Helium
Discussion
Nos is laughing gas right? 
Out of curiosity, how much does it cost, in the dentists chair and also when boosting a car.
And helium... im going to buy a small tank for my desk to make phone calls from clients more entertaining
Does anyone know whether helium is bad for you. I heard laughing gas kills brain cells faster than doom kills files. How about helium?
back to the laughing gas, has anyone had it? Whats it like?
Out of curiosity, how much does it cost, in the dentists chair and also when boosting a car. And helium... im going to buy a small tank for my desk to make phone calls from clients more entertaining
Does anyone know whether helium is bad for you. I heard laughing gas kills brain cells faster than doom kills files. How about helium? back to the laughing gas, has anyone had it? Whats it like?
AFAIK commercially pure helium can collapse your lungs so probably not a good thing. I always wanted to fill the balloons at my last dealership with the pure stuff, scroates would steal them from the pitch all day, parents would even stop their cars to allow their feral offspring to nick them.
At my current place we use balloon gas, a mixture of helium and air. I can confirm that it doesn't seem to have any side affects other than a sore throat if you get carried away with it.
At my current place we use balloon gas, a mixture of helium and air. I can confirm that it doesn't seem to have any side affects other than a sore throat if you get carried away with it.
UKBoB said:
Nos is laughing gas right?
And helium... im going to buy a small tank for my desk to make phone calls from clients more entertaining
back to the laughing gas, has anyone had it? Whats it like?
My brother got so drunk at his best friends wedding, that he stole all the helium balloons, inhaled and did his best man's speech in the style of Joe Pasquali. Was the best wedding speech I ever heard.
NO (alughing gas) is a very important bio-molecule and relaxes smooth muscle (bowels, blood vessels, etc). Interestingly Viagra works by blocking the action of an enzyme that release NO, so contricting blood vessels and impairing blood flow away from a particular area...
It was designed as a blood pressure drug (to lower blood pressure or something) but when they got to their first round of clinical trials (always done on healthy males) there was an interesting side effect reported
ANyway, I don't know of any bad biological effects of He but it must do something in your body as otherwise it couldn't cause your vocal cords to contract... hmm... might have to check this one out.
It was designed as a blood pressure drug (to lower blood pressure or something) but when they got to their first round of clinical trials (always done on healthy males) there was an interesting side effect reported
ANyway, I don't know of any bad biological effects of He but it must do something in your body as otherwise it couldn't cause your vocal cords to contract... hmm... might have to check this one out.
D_Mike said:Don't think the cords contract, isn't the frequency change due to the much lower density of the medium in which the cords are vibrating? For a given vocal pluck the cords vibrate a lot plucking faster
ANyway, I don't know of any bad biological effects of He but it must do something in your body as otherwise it couldn't cause your vocal cords to contract... hmm... might have to check this one out.
The only medical note of caution I've seen concerning use of helium for voice modification concerns the risk of hypoxia - remembering to breathe air now and then to get some oxygen should see that off.
Regarding laughing gas, the first mrs turbo had gas and air for our firstborn, I don't think there was much chance of blood flow experimentation anywhere near key regions at the time due to the rather large moving obstruction
she said it didn't take the pain away but thought it was happening to somebody else, weird.
Regarding laughing gas, the first mrs turbo had gas and air for our firstborn, I don't think there was much chance of blood flow experimentation anywhere near key regions at the time due to the rather large moving obstruction
she said it didn't take the pain away but thought it was happening to somebody else, weird.Heluim Fifty baloons for £32.00.
nitrous oxide 0.30KG 10/2002 N2 12BAR 1.09L - 70 baloons, about £35.
nitrous oxide 0.30KG 10/2002 N2 12BAR 1.09L - 70 baloons, about £35.
D_Mike said:
NO (alughing gas) is a very important bio-molecule and relaxes smooth muscle (bowels, blood vessels, etc). Interestingly Viagra works by blocking the action of an enzyme that release NO, so contricting blood vessels and impairing blood flow away from a particular area...
It was designed as a blood pressure drug (to lower blood pressure or something) but when they got to their first round of clinical trials (always done on healthy males) there was an interesting side effect reported
ANyway, I don't know of any bad biological effects of He but it must do something in your body as otherwise it couldn't cause your vocal cords to contract... hmm... might have to check this one out.
Nearly right
- hey, you're a chemist, late night post? Laughing gas / go-faster gas is nitrous oxide, N2O, which is converted to NO in the body. NO relaxes the walls of blood vessels and increases flow/reduces pressure. Nitroglycerine is also converted to NO, hence its use as a treatment for angina.
Viagra AFAIK does the opposite - raises blood pressure by constricting vessels, especially those leading out of the penis, blocking the outflow to get that throbbing purple effect.
Helium doesn't affect the vocal chords but the speed of sound in it is much faster than in air, due to the lower mass of the particles, so all your vocal tracts resonate at a higher frequency.
By rights helium shouldn't have any effect on the body, being as inert as a noble gas gets. But for some strange reason noble gases act as anaesthetics. Don't ask me why, I haven't a clue. Apparently xenon is the best but all the others work to a greater or lesser extent.
Nitrous oxide is also used as the propellant in cans of squirting cream. As long as you don't go mad with the thhsspplltlt bit trying to get the last dregs of cream out, there's enough nitrous oxide left in the can for a decent lungful.
In "Espedair Street", Iain Banks has two of his characters try the effects of honking on squirting cream cans. One of them concludes "To be honest, I don't know if the cans worked or not." Gonads. It works very well
As he is a writer who is normally pretty good on his technical details (unlike Frederick Forsyth
) I find it particularly disappointing on the odd occasions when he gets it wrong. Another, more annoying, example is in "Canal Dreams" where one character ignites an oxyacetylene torch by sweeping it across the glowing fag end in another character's mouth. It would be great if this actually worked. Many's the time the torch has gone out on me while welding and I have been pissed off at the impossibility of relighting it off my fag. But I digress.
We managed to get hold of a couple of giant helium cylinders at Uni, went nuts on the stuff for a couple of hours....none of us have been right ever since
Best if you get tanked up, you start phoning up friends at first then ordering pizzas etc.
Don't know quite why but we found the funny voice only lasted for a short time before you had to take another scoof. Maybe just expected it to last longer.
Best if you get tanked up, you start phoning up friends at first then ordering pizzas etc.
Don't know quite why but we found the funny voice only lasted for a short time before you had to take another scoof. Maybe just expected it to last longer.
Hilts said:
We managed to get hold of a couple of giant helium cylinders at Uni, went nuts on the stuff for a couple of hours....none of us have been right ever since
Best if you get tanked up, you start phoning up friends at first then ordering pizzas etc.
Don't know quite why but we found the funny voice only lasted for a short time before you had to take another scoof. Maybe just expected it to last longer.
Only lasts as long as it takes to breath the He out. Its effects as an anesthetic are probably due to mild hypoxia whereby the partial pressure of O2 in your blood drops. You can get the same funny voice effect with any gas that is less dense than air. We used to mess about with cylinders of hydrogen (probably best attempted by non-smokers) and got identical results.
I was working in a call centre for a major bank once rolling out some new computers. Went for a coffee break and a group of call centre workers, who had stolen a load of leftover balloons from an office party the night before. Funniest thing I heard was one of the workers inhaled a lungfull of helium and started reciting his call centre telephone script
Pigeon said:
Viagra AFAIK does the opposite - raises blood pressure by constricting vessels, especially those leading out of the penis, blocking the outflow to get that throbbing purple effect.
Viagra inhibits some enzyme that releases NO, so blocking smooth muscle relaxation...
>> Edited by D_Mike on Friday 8th April 09:18
vixpy1 said:Speaking of plucking instruments, check this out
Nowe that depends on your plucking intrument...
my understabdubf is that as long as there is sufficient oxygen, helium is fine, deep see diver breath helium oxygen mixes
as a useless piece of trivia about helium, at the height of the cold war in the mid 80s the russians were planting bugs in the us moscow embassy faster then the americans could pull them out of the wall, so they came up with this great plan, they would gas seal the embassing and fill it with a helium oxygen mix, as stated earlier the density of the mix is lower hence the high pitc voices, but you can undertand them, but they're very hard for bugs to pick up, i don't know if it's true and the cold war ended before they could carry out the plan, but i just love the concept of the embassy staff sounding like pinky and perky
as a useless piece of trivia about helium, at the height of the cold war in the mid 80s the russians were planting bugs in the us moscow embassy faster then the americans could pull them out of the wall, so they came up with this great plan, they would gas seal the embassing and fill it with a helium oxygen mix, as stated earlier the density of the mix is lower hence the high pitc voices, but you can undertand them, but they're very hard for bugs to pick up, i don't know if it's true and the cold war ended before they could carry out the plan, but i just love the concept of the embassy staff sounding like pinky and perky
Pigeon said:
In "Espedair Street", Iain Banks has two of his characters try the effects of honking on squirting cream cans. One of them concludes "To be honest, I don't know if the cans worked or not." Gonads. It works very well
A 'friend' habitually bought boxes of replacement N2O cartridges for such squirty cream cans - only used them in a soda syphon instead, without water, which made a very handy dispenser for N2O.
Don't know about the voice, but strange woozy effect. There are better options
Hydrogen?. I really, really wouldn't fancy inhaling a hydrogen/air mix - it wouldn't take very much to have a small explosion inside your lungs if someone did happen to cause a little spark... Cue Mr. Creosote.
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