How do fluorescent tubes work?
Fluorescent tubes work like this. When electricity is supplied to the tube, special phosphors become excited and give off energy in certain wavelengths. The interesting thing is that is possible to design fluorescent tubes to send out primarily red, green or yellow. In fact they can be designed to emit any colour you like. The benefit of this property is that they can be designed with plants in mind, since plants do not use all wavelengths with equal efficiency. In response to this, fluorescent tubes have been designed which send out proportionately more blue and red light. This means that the green-yellow-orange fraction has been reduced. The loss green-yellow-orange, even though it is slightly efficient, is not compensated enough by the blue-reds and increased plant growth is not possible. Maximum growth using fluorescent lights Research has shown that that maximum growth of most plants is better achieved with cool white fluorescent lights rather than the blue-red phosphors. Experts
