I am trying to heat a thin platinum wire with a controllable power supply, using what I believe to be Joule heating. It doesn't have to get intensely hot, the main application is observing behavior of materials when heated by this wire over a modest range of temperature. I am having some problems with building it.

How exactly should my platinum wire be connected to the power supply? Is it simply one end of the wire on the positive, the other end on the negative? Wouldn't this short the circuit? Is there a resistor required somewhere, or is platinum resistive enough?