Ohm's Law: The Formula For Vapor

Ohm's Law, the basic electrical formula that explains how and why your coils do what they do inside of your vaporizer.  

Overall, it's actually a very simple mathematical formula, and entirely essential when building your own coils, or using an unregulated device.  

To break it down, here is a simple chart showing the different ways to use the formula:

The big ones you're going to use are the one's calculating for V (voltage) and I (Current).  But before I go any further let me simply break down how Voltage, Current, and Resistance works:

Think of electricity in a wire like water in a garden hose, your end goal is to get water from the tap, to the end of the hose 10 feet away.  Voltage, is going to represent the force in which the water is travelling, Current (or Amps) is going to be how much water you are trying to push through the hose, and resistance (R) or Ohm's is representing the diameter of the hose/the amount of resistance the water is going to face while travelling through the hose.  I know I'm a visual learner, so here's another picture to help it make sense:

Now why is this important?  Well if you read what your batteries maximum recommended Amp output is, you'll see that it's somewhere in the range of 20-35A (amps), which means if you're building on an unregulated device and you build too low, you will be overdrawing the battery past it's limit.  To find out if you're building to low, you need to know your Voltage, and resistance.  

Your voltage will be listed right on the battery, at a full charge (In general) a battery will output 4.2 Volts on an unregulated device, and gradually get lower as the battery weakens.  (You won't notice this on a regulated device, because the device manages the volts used) So assume when calculating that your voltage will be 4.2V at most. 

Now your resistance will be the thing you have to measure, whether this is using a regulated device, or an ohm reader, you Absolutely need to know what your resistance is before using an unregulated device.  Let's say, Your build measured at 0.25 Ohms or Ω.

You take that number, with the voltage, and use that fancy formula to tell you your Amps, you may need a calculator (Luckily our phones all have that now).

I(Amps) = 4.2(V) ÷ 0.25(R) 

I = 16.8 Amps

Which is a safe, and decent power level.  

A general rule, is that the lower you build, the more current your battery will put out. Basically, more current = more heat and vapor. This number goes up very quickly, as an example if you built a 0.2 Ohm coil at the same voltage, you would be putting out 21 Amps, which is very close to a lot of batteries' safe limit. 

Ohm's law is a crucial step in your own vaping education, you don't have to use it, but it's very good to understand it.  The misuse or ignorance of ohms law is how you hurt yourself, and if you choose to not use it, you should probably stay away from unregulated devices all together.  Of course, if you have more questions or want a more in depth explanation, a Vaping the Way staff member would be more than happy to help in store.  

Vape Safe!

BlogBuildingOhms lawRdaTube modTutorial