Any hookah smokers? Or electrically inclined people...

[CrAz3D]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah

Mid eastern tobacco smoking device.
A lot smoother than cigarettes, but slightly better (I think)...not much.

Anyhow, friends smoke a lot & don't like lighting coals on their stove so we were thinkin...an electric coil thing.

Now, we're thinking use a battery (a large one I guess) & steel coil instead of the coal. 

SO, my question is what would be the best way to do that?  We need the steel coils to be red hot so it can smoke the sheesha (tobacco covered in molasses I believe).  Would we want to plug something into a wall socket & have a regulator of some sort or would a large battery work?



That's the bowl that the tobacco sits in, you set the coal on top of the tobacco (or on a plate/foil above the tobacco)

[Sidoh]

You'd need a decent amount of voltage to heat most metals to the point they're "red hot."  I'm not sure what the specific heat of steel is, but if you can find a somewhat heavy spring, I'm pretty sure it'd do the trick.  I don't know specifically how much current/potential you'd need to heat a coil like that, but I'm pretty sure you'd need to use a DC power source.

In any case, smoking is bad, mmmkay?

[CrAz3D]

Yeah, I was beginning to think heavier coil.

We'd like to try a battery, just so we can get portability out of it.  If not, we'll resort to a nice wall socket plug/cord/regulator setup I believe

[Newby]

The idea is to use a coal... as far as I know.

[Sidoh]

Yeah, I was beginning to think heavier coil.

We'd like to try a battery, just so we can get portability out of it.  If not, we'll resort to a nice wall socket plug/cord/regulator setup I believe

A battery is probably your best bet anyway.  Try a car battery, but be careful not to kill yourselves.

I wish I could give advice with greater degrees of certainty, but I'm relatively uneducated in electricity.  Maybe after next semester...

[rabbit]

You should smoke cyanide instead of tobacco.  It has the same overall effect, only faster.

[MyndFyre]

You should smoke cyanide instead of tobacco.  It has the same overall effect, only faster.

LMFAO

[CrAz3D]

The idea is to use a coal... as far as I know.

Yes, but you can use electric heaters too, you just need something hot enough to make the tobacco smoke

[Chavo]

If you have a decent voltage source and a good heating element it should work fine.

The equation for heat given off by a 'resistor' (any simple element that resists the flow of current) is just the Power equation P=IV.  You can rewrite it as P=V²/R where R is the resistance of your heating element and V is the Voltage across your resistor (not the voltage source).  You can find the resistance of your coil of wire by using R = pl/A where p = resistivity of the element (greek charactor rho), l is the length of your resistor (the length of the coil if it were stretched out straight), and the cross-sectional area of the wire (estimate it).

Rewriting,
P= V²*A / p*l     The resistivity constant of iron is 1.0×10-7.  I don't have a number for steel so I'm going to approximate it as iron.  For the benefit of this example, lets call the width of the wire 1mm which gives a radial area of 7.85×10-7 m².  Let's again assume a realistic figure of .25m for the stretched out length of wire.  If you use a car battery, your Voltage is ~12V (the internal resistance is negligible).

P = 12V * 7.85×10-7 m² / (1.0×10-7 * .25m) = 376.8 W.  At this power output, it would take about 16 seconds to boil one ounce of water (incorrectly assuming all the thermal power is transferred). I used water because I don't know what temperature you need the tobacco to be and 100 degrees Celsius is easy.  It takes about 6000 Joules of energy to boil an ounce of water (use Energy = Power * time in seconds for a close estimation).   In any case, I doubt someone using this device will want to use it only every 16 seconds (approximately). so for the estimations I gave, it doesn't look feasible.  However, you could mess around with that (perhaps find a better material) to get some numbers you like. 

[CrAz3D]

If you have a decent voltage source and a good heating element it should work fine.

*number crap*

Yeah, I just need more juice flowing I guess.