left two-five-zero, drop one-zero-zero...shot out! shot over stand by for incoming rounds, danger close, over.

OK, lets take this apart. I understand you don't think your meter is "worthless". I didn't say it was "worthless". I said it "is not going to give you an accurate representation for purposes with reptiles."

To disagree with that statement, is to disagree with facts and not understand the nature of the electromagnetic spectrum. I know this bores some people to tears, but if your going to mess with this kind of stuff....meters and UV lights and taking "readings"...then one must really understand what it is you want to measure. And why measure something at all if you don't want to do it accurately? Isn't that what a measure is for?

I agree that it does "give you some representation of energy emitted from a bulb". It does indeed.....but WHAT ENERGY is the question....not "some representation" of an unknown energy! For $%*@ sake man! If we just went on "energy level" radiated alone without defining what energy level is really important....then I could say the most powerful halogen is better than a fluorescent tube, because it radiates more of some energy!

Your meter may have it's worth. But I wouldn't say it's better than nothing when judging reptile lights. This sort of meter could be worse than nothing by giving you readings that confuse the issue...making you think you are getting better than you are, or making you think a light is safe when it is not.

There are GREAT UV lights out there on the market you could buy. Lets say you bought one and stuck that UV index meter under it to get a reading. Lets say the meter says your getting 7 or 8 under the basking side. That's pretty good, huh? Just like mid-day in the summertime down in Arizona, right? You would think that was a pretty good light. But what if the percentage of that spectrum the meter was basing this reading on was; 10%UVA, 20% UVB, and 70% UVC? You've mistakenly bought a UVC sterilization light which after only a short time of exposure will doom him to a slow painful death from radiation tissue damage.

Some measure is not good enough. A meter like this that reads "some" measure could tell you anything.

Now maybe you won't be unfortunate enough to make the mistake of buying a light that radiates in the wrong spectrum. But confirming the spectrum and checking that radiation with a specifically defined measure is the whole point! And in the reptile husbandry field the only specific band of UV frequencies which are important are UVA ( 320 to 400 nm ) & UVB ( 280 to 320 nm ). And the most commonly accepted industry measure of their energy is the microwatt/cm2.







-----
"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]