My girlfriend and I have a lovely little touch lamp on our nightstand, one which you can tap to cycle through several levels of illumination. We have recently been debating exactly how these touch lamps work. She argues that it is somehow heat related - that it detects body heat, a notion that I dismissed since you can’t turn them on with, say, a hair dryer, and the fact that my hands are often freezing on a cold Chicago night. Since you generally can’t get the lamp to turn on with an object like a pen, I say that it has something to do with the fact that the human body conducts electricity, or that the contact somehow interrupts some current flow in the metal parts of the lamp. However, since I have no idea what I am talking about, I cannot construct a decent argument. Any help?
Your body is basically a big capacitor. A tiny amount of current flows when you touch the lamp.
A good explanation is here:
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may98/893276774.Eg.r.html
It like you said, some electrostatic device senses when it’s touched and cycles through the light states.
A heat-driven switch would take too long to heat and cool off to be an “instant” switch.
Try touching it with various inanimate objects of different materials and temperatures. I’ll bet glass won’t activate the switch, or maybe sporatically.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm - Rush
This has been said, but here’s something approaching experimental proof. You can buy a device which will convert a normal lamp into a “touch lamp”. My parents had a few of these and I did some experimenting around the house. You screw it into the socket and then screw the bulb into it. It works even with three-way bulbs. But the caveat: You must attach a contact to the lamp base and the lamp base (apparently) must be made of a conductive metal. Therefore, it’s an electricity thing.
My touch lamp turns itself on and off by itself all the time. It has done this regardless of where I’ve lived and where the lamp has been plugged in.
It is pretty much a nightly occurrence for me to wake up and turn off the light.
My WAG is that very slight electical surges or shorts are activiating the mechanism without the lamp having to be touched.
Have you considered an alternative…that your room may be haunted?
If I were you I’d go out and get an experienced exorcist!
I don’t think an exorcist will do it, this is an electric-haunting. You need an anti-electricist.