Why do some street lights turn off when I walk near or under them?
Cecil Adams investigated this one a while back, and an awful lot of people seem to be convinced that street lamps turn off when they walk by. The answer is a combination of engineering and psychology. Street lamps go out, entirely on their own. They cycle on and off, especially as the lamp gets older and they require more voltage to keep going, causing overheating. Then you walk by 10,000 street lamps and notice only the one that happens to go out when you’re walking by it. You don’t notice any of the ones that didn’t go out because they didn’t do anything interesting. Sources: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_047.
