Everything a Normal Person Needs to Know About Helium

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Helium is so great...and we are running out of it, but also we are not running out of it.

This video has a surprising number of sources:

One use of helium I didn't mention was in deep-water diving. Divers put mix their breathing gas with helium because the normal gas (nitrogen) is more soluble in human blood, and as water pressures increase, that pressure can force the nitrogen into your cells with causes "nitrogen narcosis." Helium is much less soluble in blood because, again, IT JUST DOESN"T INTERACT WITH STUFF.

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[icon]

Today I learned that I am not a noble gas because I reacted to this notification very easily.

[wherethebirdsgo]

I’m so glad I learned about a problem just now but actually it’s not a problem, that’s my favorite type of problem, quickly resolved

[zcmini]

0:02 Hank, how often are you running in to people being wrong about Helium? How many times a day does Helium come up for you?!?

[_mels_]

Everything a normal person needs is to know that helium is funny.

HeHe

[Torpedex]

"we can probably be a little less concerned with this one thing" is the closest we've got to a win this year so I'm absolutely counting it

[grantparker]

As a member of the particle physics community, our story is a little different; we use literal TONS of helium in detectors for a lot of the reasons Hank mentioned. And while there is hope with newly discovered reserves and methods, we often have to negotiate with both governments and other experiments to trade elements like helium because there isn't enough to go around for the size of experiment we want to do.

[NickSquaredTV]

REALLY liked how Hank said “According To My Projections!” At 3:43

[Truesoldier]

This is hilarious because I used to (and I guess no longer will) PREACH to people about how we're so reckless with helium putting it into balloons meanwhile we need it for such crucial technology, and we're running out. I feel like this video was made for me. Thanks Hank!

[elayna_]

I find it really funny that the reason we’re “running out” of the element that fills our floaty birthday balloons is because it literally just floats away, cause hey, sometimes the most literal ‘duh’ explanation is the correct scientific one. Not often, but sometimes.

[Noah-yjuu]

As a hard of hearing viewer, I am absolutely DELIGHTED to see videos fully captioned within a few hours of them being out. Thank you!
At the risk of sounding ungrateful, I would just like to mention that any additions you put on the bottom of the screen are not readable behind the captions. This means I have to pause the video, turn off the captions, go back a few seconds, read the addendum, turn captions back on and then continue watching.

Putting any important text on the side or top of the screen, or even just a little bit higher than baseline, makes a big difference!

As for the actual content of the video: After seeing one too many clickbait titles, I was genuinely a little worried about our helium! Thanks for taking a little thing off my mind :)

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

Everyone breathing in helium from balloons as children:
*You know, I'm something of a chipmunk myself*

I love helium...I just can't speak highly enough about it.

[RedsterDad]

Love the video! One small thing though. The rocket showed at 0:57 is the Ares I which has a first stage (the one being shown in the video) that is a solid rocket motor and therefore doesn't use any helium as it doesn't have tanks needing to be pressurized. That being said the upper stage of the Ares I does use liquid propellant and does utilize helium to maintain pressure as the liquid fuel is consumed but that isn't the stage shown firing in the clip.

[forabug]

As someone who occasionally uses giant supercooled magnets to look at chemistry, this info is very reassuring! Glad I can keep doing NMR without worry!

[jadewhite]

Hank, I feel like this video doesn't really address whether we're running out of helium, but whether we are *immediately* running out of helium. It's still a more or less finite resource with no practical way to manufacture it at meaningful scales [no, YT commenters, fusion reactors don't solve this]. If we have 100 years more supply of the stuff now, should we not still be worrying about it running out in 100 years?

[chemputer]

"won't freeze, even at absolute zero."

At first, I was like uhhh what? Then I looked it up, and damn, yeah, checks out, below 2.5MPa it's a liquid even at absolute zero. You gotta crank on the pressure to make it a solid.

[Drewheeler]

Can you make a follow up, “Everything a nerd wants to know about helium”?

[underhypedandoverrated]

I’m only a little upset hank didn’t make a pun about the phrase “price of helium tanked” but I’ll let it slide

[brandonrout]

I love this video! I'm a junior high physical science teacher and we've been going over the elements recently. I may have to show this video to the class. It's topical, educational, and will expose more people the this wonderful community.

[garretodonnell]

Helium is also used in technical SCUBA diving because it on and off gases very easily from body tissue unlike Nitrogen which causes the bends :)

[flagmichael]

An update: Arizona has an enormous source of helium in the Holbrook Basin; an estimated 2.29 billion cubic feet of it. It has come to be called "the Saudi Arabia of helium." As the video points out (too few do) helium is produced by radioactive decay of elements such as uranium, and northern Arizona has a _lot_ of uranium. How does that work? Well uranium releases alpha particles - a pair of protons and a pair of neutrons - when it decays. Alpha particles only need to capture a couple stray electrons to be helium. It is sometimes said helium is a non-renewable resource, but that is not strictly true. More of it is naturally formed every second.