Trouble with lights and my brain

[agrlhasnoname]

Hello all,

I have been thinking a lot about setting up an indoor grow system for a while now and have been trying to research... but no matter how much I read I don't think I'll ever figure out who Kelvin is and what he does with his watts haha.
I was wondering if a 450w led light would be good for 2-3 plants in a 32x32 tent?
I am sorry if this has been asked before I tried to search for similar things first but I have a hard time navigating the internet on my cell phone.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read and thanks in advance for any answers!

 

[Scientific]

Well first off...
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

Next, I think at least two 450s would work better than just one for a tent of that size. If it was my tent, I'd consider two 1000s.

 

[agrlhasnoname]

Hahaha thank you!
Do you mean 2 1000w leds or something else?
I was just considering led because it seems easier, since I feel so numb on the subject of lights haha. Usually when you want to learn something it comes easier

 

[Scientific]

I would go with LEDs, yeah, because they put the energy in the red and blue that chlorophyll can use and not yellow and green that it can't, so more of your energy dollar goes into plant material.

I'm seeing some push-back against that notion lately, but nothing the makes sense to me.

 

[gbauto]

Lord Kelvin-some Scottish dude from way back when who figured out how low you can go-temp wise. -273.15 degC is absolute zero and the Kelvin scale uses the same units as Celsius. When used in reference to lighting I believe it's an analogy to heating an object to a specific temp(in deg. K) to produce a specific spectra-think in blacksmith terms:red hot(lower K) to white hot(higher K).
For the size area you are using I would shoot for at least 300W of ACTUAL power consumption-not advertised rating(?).

 

[Scientific]

I believe it's an analogy to heating an object to a specific temp(in deg. K) to produce a specific spectra-think in blacksmith terms:red hot(lower K) to white hot(higher K).

Yeah, I recall the term "ideal black body radiator," which was like a perfectly black ball (maybe even one that reflected zero light? We're in the physicist's twilight zone here... no wonder Carl Sagan smoked pot ). I think of a cast iron ball covered with soot.

When you heat it to a certain number of degrees above absolute zero, you get a certain color light, just like a blacksmith looking at the chisel that's cherry red or bright red to figure out how hot it is.

Or in our case:

At 2700 degrees above absolute zero you get a nice warm light.
At 3000 the light is warm white.
And at 6500 it's just starting to get bluish white.