A flashtube (flashlamp) is an electric arc lamp designed to produce extremely intense, incoherent, full-spectrum white light for a very short time. A flashtube is a glass tube with an electrode at each end and is filled with a gas that, when triggered, ionizes and conducts a high-voltage pulse to make light. Flashtubes are used most in photography; they also are used in science, medicine, industry, and entertainment.
Flashtubes of various sizes for laser pumping. The top three are xenon flashtubes. The last one is a krypton arc lamp, (shown for comparison).
Xenon flashtubes used on smartphones and cameras are usually externally triggered.
A ruby laser head, assembled and disassembled, revealing pumping cavity, the ruby rod, and two water-cooled flashtubes.
An externally triggered, 3.5 microsecond flash. The flash fully discharges before the arc can move away from the glass and fill the tube, causing excessive wear to the lamp.
In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term still encountered in a few compound names, such as the condenser microphone. It is a passive electronic component with two terminals.
Capacitor
Battery of four Leyden jars in Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, the Netherlands
A simple demonstration capacitor made of two parallel metal plates, using an air gap as the dielectric
A surface-mount capacitor. The plates, not visible, are layered horizontally between ceramic dielectric layers, and connect alternately to either end-cap, which are visible.