What is the difference between sunlight and "artificial" light? Why do plants only photosynthesize sunlight?

Question

Since all life on this planet requires some amount of sunlight somewhere in its food chain, I'd like to understand what it is about sunlight that gives this "life energy", and why it's not present in other kinds of light. Is all light not the same?

Answer 1

Photosynthesis is dependent upon a particular frequency of light. It is actually green. The color of chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs this wavelength light rather than reflecting it and uses the energy for photosynthesis. Then energy in that is absorbed matches exactly the energy needed for the reaction that is occurring.

Incandescent light is primarily orange with fluorescent light being a pa lid green. Since they lack the frequency necessary, plants don't use them. That is why they sell Grow Bulbs for plants. They have a coating that causes green to be added to the spectrum they produce.

Answer 2

Unlike sunlight, artificial light can be produced using many different light sources like halogen bulb,sodium lamp, tungsten filament, etc. These produce light of varying intensity and energy.
Plants can use both natural (sunlight) or artificial light for photosynthesis, as is done in plant tissue cultures. The important point is that light of sufficient energy (hv) should be able to excite the photosynthetic pigments necessary for photosynthesis.

Answer 3

Photosynthesis is an important biochemical process in which plants, algae, some bacteria, and some protists convert the energy of sunlight to chemical energy. The chemical energy is used to drive synthetic reactions such as the formation of sugars or the fixation of nitrogen into amino acids, the building blocks for protein synthesis. Ultimately, nearly all living things depend on energy produced from photosynthesis for their nourishment, making it vital to life on Earth. It is also responsible for producing the oxygen that makes up a large portion of the Earth's atmosphere. Organisms that produce energy through photosynthesis are called photoautotrophs (as opposed to chemoautotrophs, which convert inorganic chemicals into organic ones which can be used as substrates in respiration). Plants are the most visible representatives of photoautotrophs, but it should be emphasized that bacteria and algae also contribute to the conversion of free energy into usable energy



Artificial sunlight is the use of a light bulb to emulate the power of the sun. It is frequently used in greenhouses, tanning salons, and other places.

Although the effects of the sun's rays and its relative brightness can be emulated, it is impossible to create a light source as bright or intense as the sun itself. This is why, upon emerging from a fully lit room, people often find that their eyes must adjust to the brighter sunlight regardless of how brightly lit the room was.

Answer 4

Sunlight has the entire color specturm. Due to how bulbs are built, they don't produce pure white light. All light is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Light can only give life engery if... the lifeform has a photo-reactive mechism i.e. the chorllyphil (spelling sorry) in plants, which establishs our ecosystem.

Answer 5

The sun's light has a black body (continuous) spectrum with a temperature of 5800 deg K. Incandescent lights have a black body spectrum of 2700 deg K. Fluorescent lights do not have a black body spectrum, but contain a mixture of many indivdual light frequencies. To the human eye, the mixture of light frequencies can look like 5800 degree sunlight (so-called "daylight" flourescents) or even higher. (When skylight is mixed in the color temperature of daylight can rise to over 6500 degrees.)

Unless specially designed, fluorescent lamps, although they may look like daylight, may be missing light frequencies needed by certain plants. "Full Spectrum" flourescents are much better in simulating actual daylight.

Answer 6

The sun gives off Ultra violet rays, artificial light (being lamps) don't supply UV radiation. Plants need this light to grow better.

Answer 7

Only if our skin cells contain chlorophyll.