quartz halogens as plant lights?

[Tony Travis]

Bryan Bankhead wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have any experiece with using qtz. halogen lights as sole
> source of illumination for plants? I have heard conflicting things about
> whether they were useful.

The quartz/halogen principle permits a very hot bulb envelope to be used 
which does not blacken because of metal evaporating from the filament 
being deposited on the envelope. The light produced is essentially 
black-body radiation at the colour temperature of the filament but the 
heat output in the infra-red region is intense: you can literally cook 
with these lights ...

I've used quartz-halogen lamps for illumination during short-term 
experiments where high light intensity (or narrow bandwidth filters) 
were needed. However, they are probably better suited to heating a 
greenhouse, than providing supplimentary illumination!

	Tony.
--
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:ajt at rri.sari.ac.uk
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
Greenburn Road, Bucksburn,          |   phone:+44 (0)1224 712751
Aberdeen AB2 9SB, Scotland, UK.     |     fax:+44 (0)1224 716687