As I sit in my dorm, I am surrounded by artificial lights from the lights in the ceiling, my desk lamp, and even the lights out in the hall. My room also has a decent sized window that allows a fair bit of natural sunlight into the room. As I started thinking about it, what is the difference between the artificial and the natural? They are both forms of light, how different can they be?

I started wondering about the energy given off by artificial light and sunlight. We can tell the difference usually between the two when we are exposed to it. Well, it turns out that the two both use energy in the form of photons to emit light. An article on Earthsky talks about comparing the two types of light on their effectiveness of growing plants. It is stated that the sun is much stronger in energy output than artificial light. But what was interesting was the article also said that scientists are able to grow plants in “growth chambers”. Seeing as the actual growth of plants is possible in an artificial setting, it makes me see the two forms of light being more similar than before.

This video by Veritasium on Youtube also helped me understand energy’s role in producing sunlight and heat.

But how about winter? In our area in particular, cloud cover during the winter makes it so we are not as exposed to the sun’s energy. An article from Consumer Health actually details how our exposure to artificial light during this time affects us. “During the winter months, your normal incandescent and fluorescent lighting causes hyperactivity, stress and eyestrain”. So, overexposure in this case is harming us. But sunlight can also harm us in the form of sunburns and in some cases leading to skin cancer. Both forms of light can harm us, interesting.

I also thought about tanning. We have tanning salons that people go inside to lay on a bed of lights to achieve a tan like many of us get outside during the summer months. Oncosec wrote up a very interesting article that compares tanning in a salon to outside. The article says that one of these tanning beds gives off the same amount of UBV light that the sun gives off, but three times the amount of UVA light. Another fundamental difference they highlight is that the tanning bed blasts the light in concentrated bursts that give tanning bed patrons increased risk having to do with the light like skin cancer. This seems to be the first real difference between the two we have come across.

In conclusion, no artificial light and natural sunlight are not the same, but they are fairly similar. It seems that based on the information here that a lot of the benefits and good things like being able to grow plants can be accomplished with both forms of light. But along with the good stuff comes a lot of the same risks such as skin cancer. It was interesting seeing how similar the two forms of light actually were.