system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I’m currently going through puberty and was wondering if anyone can explain the science behind voice cracks?
gpt
Your vocal cords produce sound by vibrating at a particular fundamental frequency, and then you modulate that sound with your jaws, lips, and tongue to create words and other noises. The frequency of the vibration of the vocal cords is itself also a function of the length of the vocal cords as well as the tension in the vocal cords and their thickness. Some of those factors are under your control and some of them are not, which is why while everyone (normal) can produce a range of sounds with their vocal cords, that range is not the same for everyone.

Just like a single string on a guitar can produce many notes because it vibrates in a different pattern to produce each note, your vocal cords can also vibrate in different patterns which allows you to span a wide range of tones with your voice. When your voice cracks, what's happening is you're having an uncontrolled transition from one of these modes of vibration to another mode of vibration. It's more common in adolescence, particularly male adolescence, because the physical properties of the vocal cords, namely their length and their thickness, are changing over time. Because of that, you don't know at any given instant what the exact correct tension to apply to the vocal cords is to produce the sound you intend to produce. So sometimes you get what you mean, and sometimes you get the equivalent sound but in a different register of your voice, a different pattern of vocal cord vibration.