1. A flash lamp, usually attached to a camera or housed within the camera body, which produces brilliant flashes of light by the discharge of electric current through a gas-filled tube.
2. A high-intensity flashing beam of light produced by charging a capacitor to a very high voltage then discharging it as a high-intensity flash of light in a tube.
3. A lamp that produces very short, intense flashes of light by means of an electric discharge in a gas.

The ability of strobe lights, or electronic flashes, to "freeze" the motion of rapidly moving objects by making them visible for only a fraction of a second makes them very useful in photography and in measuring vibration and other types of high-speed motion.

A small xenon-filled tube with metal electrodes fused into ends.

The gas flashes brilliantly when a capacitor is discharged through the tube.