Helium Made to Mimic Hydrogen and High-Pitched Voices
Subject
How to Disguise a Helium Atom as a Hydrogen Atom
Donald Fleming of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues managed to disguise a helium atom as a hydrogen atom byreplacing one of its orbiting electrons with a muon, which is far heavier than an electron. Because it is so heavy, the muon sits 200 times closer to the helium nucleus than the electron it replaces and cancels out one of the nucleus's positive charges. The remaining…
Cause and Effect
Object
How Much Would a Heavier Helium Atom Affect the Pitch of Your Voice?
Cyko_01: does it make your voice go higher or lower when inhaled? Menkhaf: I guess it was a joke, but it should be rather simple to determine: if the gas if lighter than the atmosphere you're breathing, your voice will be lighter if you inhale this. sploxx: To be more specific, the molecular weight of normal He to He with one muon attached is roughly 4.1/4.0. The change in pitch relative to breathing He should be…
Why they relate
Physicists made a helium atom act like a hydrogen atom, and the geeks at Slashdot figure out how much the new helium atom would affect the pitch of your voice in comparison to a normal helium atom.