Eli5: What is the difference between natural and artificial light; and why can some plants thrive on artificial light?
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Natural light is just another word for sunlight, artificial light is produced by lamps. Light is light, though. It’s all photons. The intensity and wavelength (roughly, the color) may vary, but other than that there is no difference.
Plants are pretty adaptable organisms able to use a wide variety of wavelengths in the color spectrum (you can see [here](https://cdn.kastatic.org/ka-perseus-images/27c5e928745dbde12550494315ec70253091eee5.png)…the higher the white lines, the more easily that light color can be used. Plants don’t use much in the yellow-green, but use a lot of violet, blue, and red.
Natural light has plenty of wavelengths in these colors, and so do most artificial lights. As long as artificial light meets the needs of the plants, it’s no different than natural light for them.
However, artificial light won’t grow all plants. Probably the _main_ reason for this is that it’s often too dim. Even bright indoor lighting is vastly dimmer than sunlight. Our eyes just don’t really notice this because they are very good at adjusting to different light levels. But outdoors can easily be ten to one hundred times brighter than an ordinary indoor room. Many plants need bright light and can’t survive on 1/10th or 1/100th the light level they are adapted to.
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