Introduction to Blue Fire Project.
When I used to live in Brazil, the neighborhood was lit by mercury vapor lamps. (This one was in front of my house.) The plants and the grass yards growed big and healthy. Flowered nicely in Spring too. Now when I moved to the US, the new neighborhood is lit by high pressure sodium lamps. (This is the road in front of my house.) The bush under the light pole (not visible in the pic) look messed up. Doesn't look full of leaves, or strong. When Spring comes the bush flowers halfway. It look weird that way.
When I see plants under mercury vapor lamps like this one. The grass and the trees look green and full. The green leaves really shows. It look really nice. Now with high pressure sodium vapor lamps, the grass and trees look dead and dried up like this one. Both pics are within 1/2 mile of each other and less than three weeks apart.
That's a big difference between the two shots. I wondered why that difference. I wanted to see what causes it. What I think the cause is that the plants under high pressure sodium vapor lamps aren't getting their natural day/night cycle. For all they care is that it's daylight. The plants under mercury vapor lamps seems like they're getting their natural day/night cycle so the grow healthy.
Why I think plants under MV (Mercury Vapor) light thinks it's night time while the ones under SV (Sodium Vapor) light it's daylight 24/7 for them? MV light is mostly blue-green light while the SV light is mostly red-yellow light. Why the leaves are green? (Sounds like first grade science. I will answer it anyway.) It's because the leaves contains mostly green pigments. Due to that the green light is reflected off the leaves while the non-green light is absorbed by the leaves and converted to sugar.
The red-yellow light from SV is absorbed by the leaves and converted to the sugar plants need for growing taller and bigger. (Explains why the leaves look dead and dry. Most of the light from SV is absorbed.) The blue-green light is reflected off the leaves and is not converted to sugar. (Explains why the leaves look strongly green. Most of the MV light is reflected off.) During daylight plants work hard making sugars. During night time the plants uses that sugar to repair whatever damage it got and to grow.
I wanted to do an experiment seeing for myself and showing others what really happens to plants under different street lamps. Like mercury vapor, sodium vapor, ceramic metal halide, quartz metal halide and see whether the lamps being coated or clear will make a difference. The plants that I will grow is Pinto Beans since they're easy to work with and grow rather quickly.