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Revision as of 13:01, 28 March 2004
- For information on pipes used to transfer water and fluids, see plumbing and pipeline transport. For many other uses of the word, see pipe.
File:Bongs.png
Bongs
water pipes
A water pipe or bong is a device used for smoking, usually cannabis, in which smoke is bubbled through a chamber containing water. Bubbling the smoke through water serves to cool down the smoke and to trap some of the heavier and more soluble particulate matter, keeping it from entering the smoker's lungs. For this reason, some users claim that cannabis smoke filtered through water is safer than unfiltered cannabis smoke.
Water pipes derive their heritage from the classical Arabic hookah, which was originally designed for smoking tobacco and other flavored smoke producing materials. Bongs differ from hookahs in that they are usually simpler, with a single mouthpiece on the water chamber rather than a hookah's one or more hoses.
A gravity bong is a different smoking device which also uses water. They are almost all home-made and are rarely available commercially. A gravity bong is made of two different containers, most typically a bucket and two-liter soda bottle. The bottom of the bottle is cut off, and the cap is made into a device capable of holding the substance to be smoked. The bucket is filled with water, and the bottle placed in the water so the missing side is underwater and the cap, filled with the substance to be smoked, is above it.
The substance is lit by one person while another slowly and steadily raises the bottle, careful not to bring the edge of the open bottom above the water level. The increasing volume of waterless-space inside the bottle pulls smoke from the cap into the bottle. The cap is taken off, and one person inhales the smoke inside the bottle, often while plunging the bottle back into the bucket (in order to force more smoke into the lungs).
A gravity bong, unlike a bong proper, does not necessarily filter the smoke through the water or cool it significantly (although they can be constructed to do so). It is simply a device whose main design feature is a large chamber in which the flow of smoke can be captured, making it easier to inhale a large amount of smoke quite quickly. Its name can be somewhat confusing, because the fact of the matter is that any apparatus that holds water would be useless in a zero gravity environment because the liquid would no longer conform to the shape of its container. Gravity bong refers only to a bong where there's a flow of smoke created by the change in air pressure caused by the movement of the level of the surface of the water held within the device; when the airflow is caused not flux of the water level but by the inhalation of the smoker's lungs, the device is referred to as a hookah, bong, bubbler, or more generally waterpipe.