I recently bought an attachment for my table lamp to make it into a touch lamp. At the time I was holding tightly to my receipt rather in awe of the capability of this little plastic piece which promised to turn my regular metal lamp into a touch lamp.
Not believing that this knick knack would work, my husband and I rushed home to test it out. It worked! I couldn’t friggin’ believe it worked. Too amazing. This simple plastic thing plugged into my outlet…my lamp plugged into it. That simple procedure turned my run of the mill lamp into a touchlamp.
How is this magic possible?
Of course I turned to Cecil. After lurking at the Straight Dope for nearly two years without actually signing up or posting a single request, this magical lamp thing is what finally motivated me?!?!?!
The archives shows how the touch lamp works…and I can imagine this when the critical piece is manufactured into the lamp…but how is this simple device added to create the same effect?
Do you have any switched outlets in your house? These are ordinary wall outlets that are connected to a light switch. No current flows to the outlet unless the siwtch is in the on position. Turn a light on, plug it into the switched outlet and magic you can turn the light on with the wall switch. Note the light itself has to be “on”; that is the circit in the light has to be closed so current can flow.
This device works the same way. You turn the light on and plug it into this device. This device has a simple on-off switch in it, but instead of being an off-on throw switch as in a wall switch, it’s run by the same kind of capacitor as in the touch lamps. When you touch the device it closes the switch and lets the current flow to the already “on” light.
I’m no electrical wizard. So forgive me if I sound a little dumb - but how does a capacitor work. It would seem that somehow the thing you plug into has to connect to the actual metal of the lamp - but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Maybe I’m misundering capacitors though???