Touch lamp + plasma ball = regular lamp?

[Callipygous]

i have two plasma balls (the cool plastic sphere things with the purple lightning inside that goes to your hand when you touch it) and a touch lamp (turns on in three brightness stages when you touch it). when i got the first plasma ball i turned it on and noticed a couple things.

 

1. my radio became very unhappy. nothing but static, no volume control, clock counting down by minutes... very strange.

 

2. my touch lamp ceased to be a touch lamp. it is now a regular lamp only without an on off switch. when you plug it in, its on, when you unplug it, its... im gonna assume i dont have to explain that one...

 

can someone explain to me what exactly happened to cause each of these effects? prefferably in fairly simple terms.

[AzurePhoenix]

This site talks about how they (touch lamps) work. I don't have a clue, but maybe you can use their explanations to build an idea.

 

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question42.htm

[Callipygous]

yeah, i had never actually researched it but thats what i figured after going through physics...

 

but what does that mean? i overloaded my touchlamp and fried something? what did it fry? how?

[AzurePhoenix]

That was my guess. Plasma is a bunch of ions and free electrons. Excessive amounts of electrons from the plasma ball somehow... I don't know, rendered the activator in the lamp non-receptive?