Oliver loves to play with the touch lamp (see video), and I can just see his mind working to figure it out. Just last night, Jess and I attempted to figure it out too. We theorized that it worked based on heat, electric charge, or vibration, but we weren't really sure. "Ahh, what a perfect subject for a science post!" I thought to myself.
After some research, I learned that the lamp works on principles of capacitance, or the capacity an object has to hold electrons. The lamp has a certain capacitance (say x), and our bodies have a certain capacitance (say y), and when the two touch, together they have a different capacitance (say z, which I am not certain if z = x + y, but anyway). A circuit inside the lamp notices this change in capacitance and causes the electric switch inside the lamp to turn on. I like to think of the change in capacitance and the electric switch like unto our finger hitting a light switch.
Interested in more, see here and here.
2 comments:
Capacitance. Very interesting, but this grandma loved the little video of Oliver-especially since it was done in the dark. (I think Oliver was leading you to your next Tuesday topic at the end of the video when he touched the radio. He would like to know how radios work!)
Interesting. I spent a good deal of time thinking about this and thought it had something to do with conductivity, which makes me think I was close. But now I'm doubting myself. I was close, right?
Cute little kid you've got there. Budding scientist, I presume.
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