Helium
I’m gonna tell you guys why I think helium is the coolest shit ever okay? Okay. So listen up cuz you’re about to learn somethin’ cool.
First up is the basics. Helium is the second element on the periodic table with an atomic number of 2. That means it has 2 protons in its nucleus. It’s atomic symbol is He. It is the second lightest element with only hydrogen beating it out. Its the most abundant element in the entire universe, but wasn’t even know about here until some French scientist was lookin’ at the sun and was all like... “I wonder what that yellow shit around the sun is.” He thought it was sodium but he was wrong on that one. Later that year though, an English guy saw the same shit and named it the D3 Fraunhofer line (because scientists are all narcissists). He finally figured out that it was a new element. They named it helium because apparently it deserved to be named after the sun god or whatever.
So for a long time all these guys thought that helium was just in space, right? Well, this Italian physicist saw that same shit the other guys saw comin’ out of a volcano but no one really believed him till two Swedish guys did some research and found its atomic weight. (It’s 4.002602 for those of you that didn’t know.)
Now we know that the stuff is pretty rare here. The atmosphere only has like, 5 parts per million. That’s less than half of a percent.
But where shit REALLY gets interesting is when you cool helium off. It does some amazing shit. See, when helium is cooled off down to almost absolute zero (that’s the coldest temperature possible ever.) it turns into what is called a superfluid. Now, superfluids will blow your fuckin’ mind okay?
Superfluid helium does things that are just bizarre. It can squeeze through molecule thin cracks, so it will leak out of most containers you try to hold it in. It also can climb the sides of a container because it isn’t affected by friction. So it will just climb up sides of a beaker and drip out. It’s fuckin’ crazy! Another thing it does, because it has no friction, is that it will remain perfectly still if its container is spun. Normally, if you have a liquid circulating in a container it will slow and stop in a few minutes. Not superfluid helium! That shit will never stop, not even a bazillion years later. It really is fuckin’ cool.
Oh yeah, and the reason it makes your voice squeaky is cuz sound waves travel faster through helium than oxygen, so it just different. It’s also nontoxic, but if you huff too much of the shit you can die from lack of oxygen. If you want your voice to get really low, huff sulfur hexaflouride instead. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
