Has anyone ever tried... (experimental)

Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
Brian. said:
I've got it. You know the light over the dentist's chair? Now, I am not sure if his light in it is grow worthy, maybe some are, but it has a crazy look to it like it has a bubble over it and is pretty bright.

Not the one's with the inverted 1/8 discoball, I mean the ones with the magnifiers over them, it's probably not even a magnifier but more of a focus lens.

A focus lens, that preferably would also intensify the light and make it like having x amount more than you actually do. Even just being 1 free light, it's worth itself in gold from what I have been reading while doing my own researches on how to grow.

focus the light, like the dentist chair does instead of like a spotlight, but reverse of the dentist who focuses it smaller, you focus it wide with magnification- flip the lense and be a larger one. Someone could make it with resin (not that kind lol!), where it distributes the light very deliberately, have more control.

I can see that growers have wanted to do that with reflections and different light cycles. If there could be a focus lens that also have some slight bit of magnification at least, you could have an after-burner light direction scheme that interacts directly with the light and if it worked could potentially instantly double your light without touching your electric bill.

Ir might be a small deal to people perhaps running a lot of lights comfortably, but the "very, very little guy" would be instantly helped out big time with no extra cost other than the lens or added risk in his small operation, and the guys with even more lights than most would see hugeeee savings in electric (or savings in usage = money BACK to get from selling it to the grid if you're solar, etc :D).

So much potential provided it not only focused the light but also magnified it in some way that made it like you had more lights than you really do.
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Its called a "reflector". . .and again, EVERY grower that is interested in efficiency is ALREADY using one.

econowing.jpg
What this thing does is just reflect all light that otherwise wouldn't be going towards your plants, downwards towards you plants. That helps ensure that no light is wasted.

Again, there is no such thing as a free lunch here. If you reflect/focus the light so that its BRIGHTER it will necessarily take up a SMALLER AREA, meaning you'll be able to grow fewer plants under it. If instead you reflect/focus the light so that it lights up a BIGGER AREA, the light itself will be that much DIMMER, meaning that there will be less growth per unit area.

If you want your plants to grow better you need to add MORE LIGHT overall. . .that is, more PHOTONS, and the only way you're going to do that is with correspondingly bigger lamps!
 
B

Brian.

Member
Note that all lenses do is CONCENTRATE the SPREAD of the light. They do NOT increase the AMOUNT of light, and therefore CANNOT increase your overall yield.
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Okay, but, if you CONCENTRATE the SPREAD of the light, you're getting ALL the light in one spot, and so even if the glass absorbs light, you're still going to be getting MORE LIGHT in one spot than you otherwise would, correct?

I can use a magnifying glass and burn my hand with that tiny surface focused to a pinpoint.

That said, Here is an experiment I can't currently do myself:

Start with a seedling. And a good sized magnifying glass. A handheld piece for reading or something.

Back it off enough to not feel hot, it will be a bigger dot - enough to more-than-encompass the seedling.

Move it back more and more - the bigger the plant, the more you move it back - it might not be a lot, but it is, through your logic and the logic that I use with that information, theoretically a boost to the already-best possible light for plants.

Someone needs to do this, it would be the biggest dankest ever.
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
ChronicObsession said:
I am a designer of new LED lamps. The only thing a magnifying component may do is focus the beam. That would be so fucking cool to do with an HPS 1000W. Fuck illuminating the room, I want a 20 degree beam on just the plants, no reflectors.
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Well, you can also focus light beams with parabolic reflectors; are lenses (and presumably expensive custom-built ones) really going to be all that much better?

In any case, I see a couple of practical issues with doing this sort of thing.

The main one is that plants can only use so much light before their own internal efficiency drops off. Atmospheric CO2 availability actual becomes the limiting factor in growth before light does, so you'll need to supplement CO2 to take advantage of increasing lighting. Doing that, you quickly run into diminishing returns where the increase in yield ends up being less than the increase in light and CO2 you boost. Your overall efficiency is actually going DOWN.

So while doubling or tripling the light wattage per plant will increase the yield, it won't double or triple the yield. You'd end up with higher yields growing more plants under the same light, with less light per plant.

Past that, sooner, rather than later, you'll run into the plants physiologic maximum growth rate. Eventually you'll hit a point where not only does more light not mean more growth, but it may even mean LESS growth as throwing on radiation way beyond their absorptive maximums starts to bleach/damage the plants chloroplasts.

I think in practice, you won't get any marginal benefit from more than around 100W per square foot, and even there you need to run an enriched CO2 environment to take advantage of it. Of course you can get there with lenses, but I think you can also do it with conventional reflectors too.
 
hydrosoil78

hydrosoil78

Active Member
take it outside or put it in a window and the sun will give every inch of it intense light, or build a death ray maybe. if you hold the magnifier too close outdoor you might cause tissue damage or death. a greenhouse with electric lights is supposed to be good.
 
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