Of course you can get high from inhaling helium, thought you’d have to inhale quite a bit before becoming airborne.
I guess they have to protect against children drifting off into the clouds if they leave the windows open.
I went a-googling after reading this, because it seemed to me that I’d read about someone bursting his lungs (due to high tank pressure and a faulty regulator) but no luck. Did find this handy faq-like thing though.
AmbushBug
I didn’t see anything in the link about it being on grounds of breaking the zero-tolerance drug policy. If the kid did this after being told not to, I can understand this minor suspension.
I think Helium-inhaling induced injuries are less common than a hundred other things going on in any school, so I think that if he wasn’t warned ahead of time, any suspension might be too harsh.
Our physics teacher did it in front of the class to illustrate and explain how and why it affected the voice. We had lots of fun that day…but then, that was twenty years ago. It’s not as safe now, or something…
No they don’t, samclem, they need to use their freaking brains. Zero tolerance is designed to hide the fact that school administrators have zero judgment (or zero brains…maybe that’s why they don’t use them). There’s no need to err at all. But we wouldn’t want to tax a school principal who probably has the job because he/she was incompetent as a teacher. This “zero tolerance” stuff really pisses me off.
Kids are learning, all right. They are learning never to trust anyone in authority. And that is the fault of the idiots in authority.
Tee hee :d
Anyway, at least it’s not “Oh the humanity!” hydrogen.
Sucking too much gas eh? You forgot the “U” in “Colour”…
(Call yourself a Canadian.)
:d&r:
Mike Nesmith (once of the Monkees) had a wonderful routine about this.
“You start doing helium and prety soon you end up on street corners selling hydrogen to support your habit.”
Hey! This isn’t funny. My junior year of high school, at the homecoming game, I sucked down an entire helium balloon without taking a breath. I passed out and split my head open on the concrete, requiring several stitches to my noggin. If the government or school officials had only banned helium to protect me, I’d not have this ugly scar under my hair.
Note: the above post is filled with sarcasm. Only the incident is true, and I blame it on my own stupidity.
Personally I don’t buy the whole “helium leads to hydrogen leads to cigarettes leads to marijuana leads to heroin” thing. I mean, there has to be a crossover between the hydrogen and cigs, right? Seems to me that if there were a problem it would be self-limiting.
I know this is a little off topic but I gotta ask it. Why does helum make your voice like a operist???
Jedi ONline
stofsky Thanks for the validation of my argument.
DesertGeezer Sounds like you have issues that I can’t help with. Sorry.
sau-chitnis Because sound travels at a different velocity in different substances.
I remember the McDonalds I worked at in High School had a Helium bottle for the birthday parties they would throw. We used to take snorts out of it all the time just for fun.
Gee, I thought the sound of a barking spider came from someplace else.
Let’s see…
When I was younger, I had taken hits of helium from balloons, cleaned engine parts in benzine, dissected formaldehyde-soaked lab specimens in biology class, wore asbestos gloves in metal shop (to learn welding and blacksmithing basics), and played with mercury.
How did I ever live past twenty? 
Seriously, I seem to recall a Jacques Cousteau TV special years ago where Cousteau’s divers were going down deeper than scuba divers could typically go. To do so, they used a mixture of gases in their tanks–there was oxygen, of course, but there was also helium, and perhaps some others. I don’t know why, but I would imagine the inclusion of helium had something to do with it being inert, depressurizing on the way up, nitrogen in the blood, and the bends. Anyway, if helium is as dangerous as some of these links say, how could Cousteau’s divers breathe it? (Assuming my memory is accurate, and they did use it?)
Helium in diving (Heliox or “trimix”).
Well, I was going to say that helium makes your vocal cords vibrate faster. Good thing I didn’t say that, because it’s incorrect.
From the Straight Dope mailbag.
Short answer: The vocal cords are producing the same frequency, but the timbre is changed because sound moves more quickly through helium than through air.
This thread gave me the incentive to do a quick scan of the medical literature (using PubMed) to look for any reported toxicity or danger from inhaling helium. What did I find?
Inhaling pressurized helium has caused:
I was unable to find any case reports in the medical literature documenting harm from inhaling nonpressurized helium.
This thread gave me the incentive to do a quick scan of the medical literature (using PubMed) to look for any reported toxicity or danger from inhaling helium. What did I find?
Inhaling pressurized helium has caused:
I was unable to find any case reports in the medical literature documenting harm from inhaling nonpressurized helium.