I saw this this morning and what wondering what the thinking was around here. (I don’t know enough to have an opinion, but I think I learned a lot watching this.)
I have read a few threads here on LED lighting, and I know people have polarizing views (sorry, couldn’t resist).
The idea of green light being helpful at “penetrating” the canopy is fascinating among other things.
It got me curious about what is next for LED lighting, about what will replace it, whether colored mylar or interchangeable lenses over white lights work, whether the sun is best grow lamp (what I’m seeing says yes), what makes it that way, why can’t we replicate indoors? Should we be growing in domes? Are there moving parts and, if so, which parts move?
Basically, I thought the video was really cool and it really got me thinking, that’s all. . .
Green light reflects off of the leaves. The colors we see on everything are the colors that are reflected. A red shirt looks red to us because the other colors of the spectrum are absorbed, except red. Given that white light contains all of the colors of the spectrum, there is absolutely “wasted” photons.
Something about how a nice white florescent bulb keeps a plant So lush green and happy though.I have a hard time keeping my girls as happy with my new multispectrum leds.They always love the nice white fluorescents
I agree. I miss my T5’s. I struggle with LED’s and seedlings until they find their footing. I had a habit early on of dropping them down as low as I used to with the fluorescents, and they definitely don’t like that. At least not with my LEDs.
My new leds even the small one would fry thier faces off that low on 20 percent could damn near lay them om a fluro bulb My work upgraded the plant to leds and gave away the remaining phillips white t5 4 footer bulbs they had some used some not even touched i got about 50 of them and im going to use every one of them till they pop damn near.I going to get a couple spare ballasts just to be safe.Finding New t5s is getting to be like finding hens teeth these days.Im going to miss them when thier gone man they were my jam.Best light to keep bonsai Moms
i hate to be that guy but i disagree. there can never be a ‘wasted’ photon because energy is never created or destroyed, energy is simply in a constant state of change, all the time. i postulate that since no-thing is ever truly destroyed, maybe we do not yet fully understand all the aspects of light that make it an energy source for plant life. maybe there’s some-thing beyond the visible spectrum or any spectrum we have identified that plays a big part on plant life. do leds and light tech work? oh yeah! will they ever stand up to natural sunlight? hah… as an indoor mostly grower it bothers me sometimes just how much plants LOVE the sun and i can’t give it to my plants year-round.
for what it’s worth, i’ve tried lots of blue+red led color combos in my early stages of growing and i always found that white light sources made my plants happier than ‘blurple’ lights.
nah i think it does. we need to be able to define what a ‘wasted’ modifier means to the word photon.
if it isn’t actively absorbed by the plant then it’s suddenly a wasted photon? what if that photon bouncing in the air is the reason that ionization happens during a storm? (i really don’t know i’m just saying we don’t know everything)
i’m glad the video discusses ePAR when it comes to led lighting. of course we’ve all seen the dr bugbee stuff. while i do think it’s a novel idea to think about maximizing on electric efficiency by tailoring lights to plants, what i think is likely to happen with cannabis in particular is that it will be impossible to make a light that can be customized to the output of a particular plant. nature does it best. nature doesn’t care about wasted photons. my two cents.
i’m not trying to create any arguments i just don’t think there’s such a thing as a wasted photon. i tend to look at life through the eyes of creation rather than arbitrary numbers and concepts. i can’t see anywhere in nature where waste is even a thing. every thing has a use for some other thing.
If you burn wood in a woodstove, most of the heat goes up the chimney. That heat is wasted. It’s inefficient. If the plants aren’t utilizing all of the photons, they are wasted photons. It’s inefficient. My response was related to his question, not physics.
I’m sure the plant utilizes green/yellow to some degree (to what degree, I don’t know) but if the leaves are green, that’s the color that’s primarily being reflected off of them.
This is a good article which covers this topic, it seems as if there is a difference between testing chlorophyll extract absorbance and what actual happens within the 3D structure of the leaf… to me this means if you are already at environmental conditions of bright enough white light, having more green light will lead to more efficient photosynthesis vs more red/blue light as the photons from green light will be able to penetrate more deeply into the leaf to areas where the red/blue can’t.
But if you are not near light saturation then you can achieve that saturation more efficiently by adding just red/blue
any-one near hypothermia has no concern about ‘wasting heat’. fire also produces noxious fumes which leds do not. those have to be vented out unless you want to suffocate.
a seedling is only capable of absorbing so much light right? why don’t we just grow big plants then? we’re being extremely inefficient by using clones or seedlings. we should just grow monsters and nothing else. seems like a silly notion to me.
this idea of ‘efficiency’ is what i question. what is efficiency and what is inefficiency? can we prove them? can we cross-check this proof and see it applies to every sector of life? the concept of ‘inefficiency’ is a man-made concept and not found in nature. every-thing has a use. no-thing is wasted.
edit* also a fire outside produces a lot of heat for those sitting around it. anyone who’s focused on capturing 100% of the heat from an outdoor fire is focusing on the wrong things imo.
@HolyAngel and @BotanicalBob Thank you for compelling me to look this up. The data certainly suggests there is more green light being absorbed than reflected. Interesting articles.
I donno man, these new woodstoves are pretty damn efficient. I don’t know enough about them and the energy lost through the chimney but they have catalytic converters and burn the gasses something like 3 times before it exits.
The question was simple. Does white light “waste” photons? If the plant is not absorbing every photon for photosynthesis, then yes, there are wasted photons. If you burn a woodstove and any heat escapes through the chimney but your intent was to capture it all, is that heat not wasted?
Oh for sure some heat is wasted, wasn’t my intent to say otherwise. It was more directed at the statement of more heat is lost through the chimney than used for heat in the house that’s all.
